Determination of Optimal Parameters for Intra-Arterial Injection & Blood Brain Barrier Disruption in the Mouse using MRI

Conor P. Foley¹, David Rubin², Alejandro Santillan², Eric Aronowitz¹, Walter Zink², Y. Pierre Gobin², Douglas Ballon¹

This work presents techniques that can be used to reproducibly disrupt the mouse blood brain barrier by using custom built endovascular microcatheters to intra-arterially deliver a hyper-osmolar solution of mannitol to the cerebral vasculature via the internal carotid artery. The extent of barrier disruption in different brain territories was quantified by performing dynamic contrast enhanced MRI using a 7 tesla small animal imaging system following the mannitol injection. We found that the extent of barrier disruption is not uniform across all brain territories, and that both injection volume and rate have a significant effect on the extent of disruption.