Structural and functional alterations of the Locus coeruleus (LC) are implicated in various neurological diseases, including Alzheimer’s. Current standard spin-echo based approaches to imaging the LC suffer from several limitations at 3T, including long acquisition time and highly anisotropic resolution. In this study, we have evaluated in healthy human subjects different MRI contrasts both at 3 and 7 Tesla to image LC. We show that visualization of the locus coeruleus is best achieved with magnetization transfer contrast at 7T superior to standard T1- and T2-weighted methods.
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