Qingqing Ye1, William M. Spees2,
Jim E. Huettner3, Joseph J. Ackerman1,2, Jeffrey J.
Neil2,4
1Department of Chemistry, Washington
University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, United States; 2Department
of Radiology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, United
States; 3Department of Cell Biology and Physiology, Washington
University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, United States; 4Department
of Neurology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, United
States
Preexchange
lifetimes of intracellular water (τ in) are of fundamental
significance to many experimental and theoretical studies, especially for
modeling water behavior in tissue. Many methodologies have been developed to
obtain this value for various cell types. Herein, we employed the method of
perfusion of microbead-adherent cells, which allowed τ in measurement by highly effective suppression
of the extracellular water MR signal and thus selective and direct
observation of the intracellular water MR signals. Histologic evaluation
confirmed that neurons and astrocytes grown on microbeads maintain key
morphologic features. We found that τ ins for neurons and
astrocytes are similar.