Bing Yao1,
Simon Hametner2, Peter van Gelderen1, Hellmut Merkle1,
Hans Lassmann2, Jeff H. Duyn1, Bagnato Francesca3
1Advanced
MRI Section, LFMI, NINDS, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United
States; 2Center for Brain Research, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna,
Austria; 3Neuroimmunology Branch, National Institutes of Health,
Bethesda, MD, United States
Neocortical lesions (NLs) are an important component of disease pathology in multiple sclerosis (MS). However, the limited resolution and contrast of conventional MRI techniques compromise their ability to detect the subtle pathological changes occurring at the inception of NLs and successive tissue loss. To address this, we investigated the detectability of NLs with T2* contrast at 7T. Comparing R2* images from post mortem tissue from two donor brains with histological iron and myelin stains, we found that two thirds of histological lesions were detectable with MRI.