Assessment of Bound Pool Fractions in the Aging Brain with Stimulated Echoes

Michaela Soellinger¹, Christian Langkammer¹, Franz Fazekas¹, Stefan Ropele¹

The bound proton pool fraction is closely linked to myelin content of white matter. Short acquisition times of a recently developed mapping method based on stimulated echoes allow for bound pool fraction determination in larger cohorts. We present a study of age-related changes, in which 10 subjects with mean age of 60 years were compared to 10 healthy subjects with mean age of 31 years. For several white matter regions, mean bound pool fractions were significantly decreased for the elderly.