Abstract #5426

Assessment of myelination in developing brains by using the inhomogeneous magnetization transfer MRI

Xianjun Li^1,2, Yuli Zhang¹, Fan Wu¹, Xiaoqian Jia¹, Xiaoyu Wang¹, Chao Jin¹, Qinli Sun¹, Heng Liu^1,2, Xiaocheng Wei³, and Jian Yang^1,2

¹Department of Radiology, the First Affiliated Hospital, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China, ²Department of Biomedical Engineering, the Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of the Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China, ³MR Research China, GE Healthcare, Beijing, China

In vivo assessment of myelination is critical for understanding the typical and pathological brain development. Inhomogeneous magnetization transfer (ihMT) has been proposed recently and may be useful to quantify myelin contents. This study tried to evaluate performances of magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) and ihMT ratio (ihMTR) in assessing the myelination of toddler and adolescent brains. The ihMTR maps hold larger image contrasts than MTR maps. Moreover, ihMTR demonstrates larger relative changes during the period from the toddler to adolescent. Results in this study suggested that ihMTR was specific for characterizing white matter and sensitive to myelination during the brain development.

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