Andreas Schfer1,
Solveig Tiepolt2, Elisabeth Roggenhofer1, Robert
Trampel1, Carsten Stueber1, Vilia Zeisig2,
Udo Grossmann2, Thies H. Jochimsen2, Osama Sabri2,
Robert Turner1, Henryk Barthel2
1Max-Planck-Institute
for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany; 2Department
of Nuclear Medicine, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany
In Alzheimer’s disease (AD) iron is accumulated in regions with beta-amyloid plaques. The aim of this study is to investigate whether a difference in quantitative magnetic susceptibility values in gray matter between postmortem tissue samples of AD patients and healthy controls can be detected using magnetic resonance imaging, via the high sensitivity of quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) to iron content. We have measured a significant susceptibility difference in the GM between beta-amyloid-positive AD and beta-amyloid-negative control tissue, with higher values for the AD tissue.