MRI of Cell Layers in Mouse Brain in Vivo Using Intra- And Extra-Cellular Contrast Agents

Takashi Watanabe¹, Jens Frahm¹, Thomas Michaelis¹

This work demonstrates a use of manganese or Gd-DTPA for MRI of the olfactory bulb, hippocampus, and cerebellum of anesthetized mice. Systemic manganese administration improves the contrast between tightly packed cellular layers and surrounding layers not only in T1-weighted but also in T2-weighted MRI. Intracranial Gd-DTPA administration reverses the contrast in T1-weighted MRI and generates a contrast similar to that in T2-weighted MRI. With manganese or Gd-DTPA, 12-min T1-weighted MRI provides a higher contrast-to-noise ratio than 161-min T2-weighted MRI at 3030300 m³ resolution. The contrast-enhanced MRI at 2525250 m³ shows anatomical contrast in unprecedented ways.