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Abstract #1086

Laminar-Specific Variations of T2* Relaxation Decay in the Cortex at 7 Tesla MRI

Sindhuja Tirumalai Govindarajan1, Julien Cohen-Adad1, Audrey Fan2, Maria Pia Sormani3, Caterina Mainero1

1Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Charlestown, MA, United States; 2Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States; 3Department of Health Sciences, University of Genoa, Genova, Liguria, Italy


Gradient Echo T2* data acquired at ultra-high field magnetic resonance (≥7 T) have shown great sensitivity to detect patterns of tissue microarchitecture in the cortex. We recently demonstrated a surface-based technique to map quantitative measures of T2* relaxation decay to study the spatial distribution of cortical myelination. In this study, we report layer-specific variations and reproducibility of T2* observed at different cortical depths shedding light into the potential use of quantitative T2* mapping to characterize the laminar architecture of the cortical ribbon in vivo.