Abstract
The objective was to demonstrate the feasibility and to evaluate the performance of high-resolution in vivo magnetic resonance (MR) imaging of the rat spinal cord in a 17.6-T vertical wide-bore magnet. A probehead consisting of a surface coil that offers enlarged sample volume suitable for rats up to a weight of 220 g was designed. ECG triggered and respiratory-gated gradient echo experiments were performed on a Bruker Avance 750 wide-bore spectrometer for high-resolution imaging. With T*2 values between 5 and 20 ms, good image contrast could be obtained using short echo times, which also minimizes motion artifacts. Anatomy of healthy spinal cords and pathomorphological changes in traumatically injured rat spinal cord in vivo could be visualized with microscopic detail. It was demonstrated that imaging of the rat spinal cord in vivo using a vertical wide-bore high-magnetic-field system is feasible. The potential to obtain high-resolution images in short scan times renders high-field imaging a powerful diagnostic tool.
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Acknowledgments.
We would like to acknowledge Sebastian Aussenhofer for his expert technical assistance, Ines Wieland for help with building the resonator, and Vikas Gulani for comments on the manuscript. This work was funded by the “Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)” under project number “HA 1232/13”.
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Volker C. Behr and Thomas Weber contributed equally to this work.
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Behr, V., Weber, T., Neuberger, T. et al. High-resolution MR imaging of the rat spinal cord in vivo in a wide-bore magnet at 17.6 Tesla. MAGMA 17, 353–358 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10334-004-0057-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10334-004-0057-5