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INTRODUCTION: The entorhinal cortex (EC) and perirhinal cortex (PC) are vulnerable to Alzheimer's disease. A triggering factor may be the interaction of vascular dysfunction and tau pathology. METHODS: We imaged post mortem human tissue at 100 μm3 with 7 T magnetic resonance imaging and manually labeled individual blood vessels (mean = 270 slices/case). Vessel density was quantified and compared per EC subfield, between EC and PC, and in relation to tau and TAR DNA‐binding protein 43 (TDP‐43) semiquantitative scores. RESULTS: PC was more vascularized than EC and vessel densities were higher in posterior EC subfields. Tau and TDP‐43 strongly correlated with vasculature density and subregions with severe tau at the preclinical stage had significantly greater vessel density than those with low tau burden. DISCUSSION: These data impact cerebrovascular maps, quantification of subfield vasculature, and correlation of vasculature and pathology at early stages. The ordered association of vessel density, and tau or TDP‐43 pathology, may be exploited in a predictive context. Highlights: Vessel density correlates with phosphorylated tau (p‐tau) burden in entorhinal and perirhinal cortices.Perirhinal area 35 and posterior entorhinal cortex showed greatest p‐tau burden but also the highest vessel density in the preclinical phase of Alzheimer's disease.We combined an ex vivo magnetic resonance imaging model and histopathology to demonstrate the 3D reconstruction of intracortical vessels and its spatial relationship to the pathology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The aim of this study was to improve robustness to motion in a vessel-encoded angiography sequence used for patient scans. The sequence is particularly sensitive to motion between imaging segments, which causes ghosting and blurring that propagates to the final angiogram. Methods Volumetric echo planar imaging (EPI) navigators acquired in 275 ms were inserted after the imaging readout in a vessel-encoded pseudo-continuous arterial spin labeling (VEPCASL) sequence. The effects of movement between segments on the images were tested with phantom experiments. Deliberate motion experiments with healthy volunteers were performed to compare prospective motion correction (PMC) with reacquisition versus no correction. Results In scans without motion, the addition of the EPI navigator to the sequence did not affect the quality of the angiograms in comparison with the original sequence. PMC and reacquisition improved the visibility of vessels in the angiograms compared with the scans without correction. The reacquisition strategy was shown to be important for complete correction of imaging artifacts. Conclusion We have demonstrated an effective method to correct motion in vessel-encoded angiography. For reacquisition of 15 segments, the technique requires approximately 30 s of additional scanning (∼25%). Magn Reson Med 76:1420-1430, 2016. © 2015 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abnormalities of the basal ganglia are frequently seen in HIV-infected (HIV+) children despite antiretroviral treatment (ART) initiation during childhood. Assessment of metabolites associated with neuronal integrity or with glial proliferation can present a sensitive description of metabolic events underlying basal ganglia structural changes. We used magnetic resonance spectroscopy to examine differences in creatine, choline, N-acetylaspartate (NAA), glutamate, and myo-inositol between HIV+ children and HIV-unexposed controls, as well as between HIV-exposed uninfected (HEU) children and HIV-unexposed controls at age 7 and at age 9. No differences in metabolites relative to the HIV-unexposed control group were found at age 7. However, at 9 years, both HIV+ and HEU had lower NAA and glutamate than unexposed control children. HEU children also had lower creatine and choline than control children. At age 7, lower CD4/CD8 ratio at enrollment was associated with lower choline levels. At age 9 lower CD4/CD8 at enrollment was associated with lower myo-inositol. Low NAA and glutamate at age 9, but not 7, suggest that basal ganglia neurons may be particularly affected by perinatal HIV/ART and that neuronal damage may be ongoing despite early ART and viral suppression. Reduced basal ganglia metabolite levels in HEU children suggest an effect of HIV exposure on childhood brain development that merits further investigation using neuroimaging and neurocognitive testing.

Purpose Functional neuroimaging of small cortical patches such as columns is essential for testing computational models of vision, but imaging from cortical columns at conventional 3T fields is exceedingly difficult. By targeting the visual cortex exclusively, we tested whether combined optimization of shape, coil placement, and electronics would yield the necessary gains in signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) for submillimeter visual cortex functional MRI (fMRI). Method We optimized the shape of the housing to a population‐averaged atlas. The shape was comfortable without cushions and resulted in the maximally proximal placement of the coil elements. By using small wire loops with the least number of solder joints, we were able to maximize the Q factor of the individual elements. Finally, by planning the placement of the coils using the brain atlas, we were able to target the arrangement of the coil elements to the extent of the visual cortex. Results: The combined optimizations led to as much as two‐fold SNR gain compared with a whole‐head 32‐channel coil. This gain was reflected in temporal SNR as well and enabled fMRI mapping at 0.75 mm resolutions using a conventional GRAPPA‐accelerated gradient echo echo planar imaging. Conclusion: Integrated optimization of shape, electronics, and element placement can lead to large gains in SNR and empower submillimeter fMRI at 3T. Magn Reson Med 76:321–328, 2016. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The cover image is based on the Original Article Rapid head‐pose detection for automated slice prescription of fetal‐brain by Malte Hoffmann et al., https://doi.org/10.1002/ima.22563. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose. To evaluate whether 3T clinical MRI with a small-animal coil and gradient-echo (GE) sequence could be used to characterize long-term left ventricular remodelling (LVR) following nonreperfused myocardial infarction (MI) using semi-automatic segmentation software (SASS) in a rat model. Materials and Methods. 5 healthy rats were used to validate left ventricular mass (LVM) measured by MRI with postmortem values. 5 sham and 7 infarcted rats were scanned at 2 and 4 weeks after surgery to allow for functional and structural analysis of the heart. Measurements included ejection fraction (EF), end-diastolic volume (EDV), end-systolic volume (ESV), and LVM. Changes in different regions of the heart were quantified using wall thickness analyses. Results. LVM validation in healthy rats demonstrated high correlation between MR and postmortem values. Functional assessment at 4 weeks after MI revealed considerable reduction in EF, increases in ESV, EDV, and LVM, and contractile dysfunction in infarcted and noninfarcted regions. Conclusion. Clinical 3T MRI with a small animal coil and GE sequence generated images in a rat heart with adequate signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for successful semiautomatic segmentation to accurately and rapidly evaluate long-term LVR after MI.

Introduction: The entorhinal cortex (EC) and perirhinal cortex (PC) are vulnerable to Alzheimer's disease. A triggering factor may be the interaction of vascular dysfunction and tau pathology., Methods: We imaged post mortem human tissue at 100 μm 3 with 7 T magnetic resonance imaging and manually labeled individual blood vessels (mean = 270 slices/case). Vessel density was quantified and compared per EC subfield, between EC and PC, and in relation to tau and TAR DNA-binding protein 43 (TDP-43) semiquantitative scores., Results: PC was more vascularized than EC and vessel densities were higher in posterior EC subfields. Tau and TDP-43 strongly correlated with vasculature density and subregions with severe tau at the preclinical stage had significantly greater vessel density than those with low tau burden., Discussion: These data impact cerebrovascular maps, quantification of subfield vasculature, and correlation of vasculature and pathology at early stages. The ordered association of vessel density, and tau or TDP-43 pathology, may be exploited in a predictive context., Highlights: Vessel density correlates with phosphorylated tau (p-tau) burden in entorhinal and perirhinal cortices. Perirhinal area 35 and posterior entorhinal cortex showed greatest p-tau burden but also the highest vessel density in the preclinical phase of Alzheimer's disease. We combined an ex vivo magnetic resonance imaging model and histopathology to demonstrate the 3D reconstruction of intracortical vessels and its spatial relationship to the pathology., (© 2024 The Author(s). Alzheimer's & Dementia published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Alzheimer's Association.)

Background: Neurofibrillary tangle (NFT) accumulation in the entorhinal cortex (EC) precedes the transformation from cognitive controls to mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease (AD). While tauopathy has been described in the EC before, the order and degree to which the individual subfields within the EC are engulfed by NFTs in aging and the preclinical AD stage is unknown., Objective: We aimed to investigate substructures within the EC to map the populations of cortical neurons most vulnerable to tau pathology in aging and the preclinical AD stage., Methods: We characterized phosphorylated tau (CP13) in 10 cases at eight well-defined anterior-posterior levels and assessed NFT density within the eight entorhinal subfields (described by Insausti and colleagues) at the preclinical stages of AD. We validated with immunohistochemistry and labeled the NFT density ratings on ex vivo MRIs. We measured subfield cortical thickness and reconstructed the labels as three-dimensional isosurfaces, resulting in anatomically comprehensive, histopathologically validated tau "heat maps.", Results: We found the lateral EC subfields ELc, ECL, and ECs (lateral portion) to have the highest tau density in semi-quantitative scores and quantitative measurements. We observed significant stepwise higher tau from anterior to posterior levels (p < 0.001). We report an age-dependent anatomically-specific vulnerability, with all cases showing posterior tau pathology, yet older individuals displaying an additional anterior tau burden. Finally, cortical thickness of each subfield negatively correlated with respective tau scores (p < 0.05)., Conclusion: Our findings indicate that posterior-lateral subfields within the EC are the most vulnerable to early NFTs and atrophy in aging and preclinical AD.

Background: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies have consistently demonstrated disproportionately smaller corpus callosa in individuals with a history of prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) but have not previously examined the feasibility of detecting this effect in infants. Tissue segmentation of the newborn brain is challenging because analysis techniques developed for the adult brain are not directly transferable, and segmentation for cerebral morphometry is difficult in neonates, due to the latter's incomplete myelination. This study is the first to use volumetric structural MRI to investigate PAE effects in newborns using manual tracing and to examine the cross-sectional area of the corpus callosum (CC)., Methods: Forty-three nonsedated infants born to 32 Cape Coloured heavy drinkers and 11 controls recruited prospectively during pregnancy were scanned using a custom-designed birdcage coil for infants, which increases signal-to-noise ratio almost 2-fold compared to the standard head coil. Alcohol use was ascertained prospectively during pregnancy, and fetal alcohol spectrum disorders diagnosis was conducted by expert dysmorphologists. Data were acquired using a multi-echo FLASH protocol adapted for newborns, and a knowledge-based procedure was used to hand-segment the neonatal brains., Results: CC was disproportionately smaller in alcohol-exposed neonates than controls after controlling for intracranial volume. By contrast, CC area was unrelated to infant sex, gestational age, age at scan, or maternal smoking, marijuana, or methamphetamine use during pregnancy., Conclusions: Given that midline craniofacial anomalies have been recognized as a hallmark of fetal alcohol syndrome in humans and animal models since this syndrome was first identified, the CC deficit identified here in newborns may support early identification of a range of midline structural impairments. Smaller CC during the newborn period may provide an early indicator of fetal alcohol-related cognitive deficits that have been linked to this critically important brain structure in childhood and adolescence., (Copyright © 2017 by the Research Society on Alcoholism.)

Low-resolution, whole-head volumes can be acquired rapidly with EPI-based volumetric navigators (vNavs). vNavs interspersed in a longer scan are widely used for prospective motion correction in a variety of sequences. To further improve the accuracy and flexibility of vNavs, we present a novel registration algorithm, tailored specifically for the vNavs application. Accuracy of the algorithm is tested on navigator volumes acquired with human volunteers at three isotropic resolutions, 6.4mm, 8mm, and 10mm, using a series of field of view (FOV) rotations and translations to provide ground truth rigid "motion".

Low-resolution, EPI-based Volumetric Navigators (vNavs) have been used as a prospective motion-correction system in a variety of MRI neuroimaging pulse sequences. The use of low-resolution volumes represents a trade-off between motion tracking accuracy and acquisition time. However, this means that registration must be accurate on the order of 0.2 voxels or less to be effective for motion correction. While vNavs have shown promising results in clinical and research use, the choice of navigator and registration algorithm have not previously been systematically evaluated. In this work we experimentally evaluate the accuracy of vNavs, and possible design choices for future improvements to the system, using real human data. We acquired navigator volumes at three isotropic resolutions (6.4 mm, 8 mm, and 10 mm) with known rotations and translations. The vNavs were then rigidly registered using trilinear, tricubic, and cubic B-spline interpolation. We demonstrate a novel refactoring of the cubic B-spline algorithm that stores pre-computed coefficients to reduce the per-interpolation time to be identical to tricubic interpolation. Our results show that increasing vNav resolution improves registration accuracy, and that cubic B-splines provide the highest registration accuracy at all vNav resolutions. Our results also suggest that the time required by vNavs may be reduced by imaging at 10 mm resolution, without substantial cost in registration accuracy.

Mescher-Garwood (MEGA) editing with spin echo full intensity acquired localization (MEGA-SPECIAL, MSpc) is a technique to acquire γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) without macromolecule (MM) contamination at a TE of 68 ms. However, due to the requirement of multiple shot-localization, it is often susceptible to subject motion and B0 inhomogeneity. A method is presented for real-time shim and motion correction (ShMoCo) using volumetric navigators to correct for motion and motion-related B0 inhomogeneity during MSpc acquisition. A phantom experiment demonstrates that ShMoCo restores the GABA peak and improves spectral quality in the presence of motion and zero- and first-order shim changes. The ShMoCo scans were validated in three subjects who performed up-down and left-right head rotations. Qualitative assessment of these scans indicates effective reduction of subtraction artefacts and well edited GABA peaks, while quantitative analysis indicates superior fitting and spectral quality relative to scans with no correction. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., (Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

Recent work has demonstrated that subject motion produces systematic biases in the metrics computed by widely used morphometry software packages, even when the motion is too small to produce noticeable image artifacts. In the common situation where the control population exhibits different behaviors in the scanner when compared to the experimental population, these systematic measurement biases may produce significant confounds for between-group analyses, leading to erroneous conclusions about group differences. While previous work has shown that prospective motion correction can improve perceived image quality, here we demonstrate that, in healthy subjects performing a variety of directed motions, the use of the volumetric navigator (vNav) prospective motion correction system significantly reduces the motion-induced bias and variance in morphometry., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Postmortem imaging refers to scanning autopsy specimens using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or optical imaging. This chapter summarizes postmortem imaging and its usefulness in brain mapping. Standard in vivo MRI has limited resolution due to time constraints and does not deliver cortical boundaries (e.g., Brodmann areas). Postmortem imaging offers a means to obtain ultra-high-resolution images with appropriate contrast for delineating cortical regions. Postmortem imaging provides the ability to validate MRI properties against histologic stained sections. This approach has enabled probabilistic mapping that is based on ex vivo MRI contrast, validated to histology, and subsequently mapped on to an in vivo model. This chapter emphasizes structural imaging, which can be validated with histologic assessment. Postmortem imaging has been applied to neuropathologic studies as well. This chapter includes many ex vivo studies, but focuses on studies of the medial temporal lobe, often involved in neurologic disease. New research using optical imaging is also highlighted., (© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Purpose: To evaluate the patterns of head motion in scans of young children and to examine the influence of corrective techniques, both qualitatively and quantitatively. We investigate changes that both retrospective (with and without diffusion table reorientation) and prospective (implemented with a short navigator sequence) motion correction induce in the resulting diffusion tensor measures., Materials and Methods: Eighteen pediatric subjects (aged 5-6 years) were scanned using 1) a twice-refocused, 2D diffusion pulse sequence, 2) a prospectively motion-corrected, navigated diffusion sequence with reacquisition of a maximum of five corrupted diffusion volumes, and 3) a T1 -weighted structural image. Mean fractional anisotropy (FA) values in white and gray matter regions, as well as tractography in the brainstem and projection fibers, were evaluated to assess differences arising from retrospective (via FLIRT in FSL) and prospective motion correction. In addition to human scans, a stationary phantom was also used for further evaluation., Results: In several white and gray matter regions retrospective correction led to significantly (P < 0.05) reduced FA means and altered distributions compared to the navigated sequence. Spurious tractographic changes in the retrospectively corrected data were also observed in subject data, as well as in phantom and simulated data., Conclusion: Due to the heterogeneity of brain structures and the comparatively low resolution (∼2 mm) of diffusion data using 2D single shot sequencing, retrospective motion correction is susceptible to distortion from partial voluming. These changes often negatively bias diffusion tensor imaging parameters. Prospective motion correction was shown to produce smaller changes., (© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Imaging biomarkers derived from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data are used to quantify normal development, disease, and the effects of disease-modifying therapies. However, motion during image acquisition introduces image artifacts that, in turn, affect derived markers. A systematic effect can be problematic since factors of interest like age, disease, and treatment are often correlated with both a structural change and the amount of head motion in the scanner, confounding the ability to distinguish biology from artifact. Here we evaluate the effect of head motion during image acquisition on morphometric estimates of structures in the human brain using several popular image analysis software packages (FreeSurfer 5.3, VBM8 SPM, and FSL Siena 5.0.7). Within-session repeated T1-weighted MRIs were collected on 12 healthy volunteers while performing different motion tasks, including two still scans. We show that volume and thickness estimates of the cortical gray matter are biased by head motion with an average apparent volume loss of roughly 0.7%/mm/min of subject motion. Effects vary across regions and remain significant after excluding scans that fail a rigorous quality check. In view of these results, the interpretation of reported morphometric effects of movement disorders or other conditions with increased motion tendency may need to be revisited: effects may be overestimated when not controlling for head motion. Furthermore, drug studies with hypnotic, sedative, tranquilizing, or neuromuscular-blocking substances may contain spurious "effects" of reduced atrophy or brain growth simply because they affect motion distinct from true effects of the disease or therapeutic process., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

H.M., Henry Molaison, was one of the world's most famous amnesic patients. His amnesia was caused by an experimental brain operation, bilateral medial temporal lobe resection, carried out in 1953 to relieve intractable epilepsy. He died on December 2, 2008, and that night we conducted a wide variety of in situ MRI scans in a 3 T scanner at the Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General) Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging. For the in situ experiments, we acquired a full set of standard clinical scans, 1 mm isotropic anatomical scans, and multiple averages of 440 μm isotropic anatomical scans. The next morning, H.M.'s body was transported to the Mass General Morgue for autopsy. The photographs taken at that time provided the first documentation of H.M.'s lesions in his physical brain. After tissue fixation, we obtained ex vivo structural data at ultra-high resolution using 3 T and 7 T magnets. For the ex vivo acquisitions, the highest resolution images were 210 μm isotropic. Based on the MRI data, the anatomical areas removed during H.M.'s experimental operation were the medial temporopolar cortex, piriform cortex, virtually all of the entorhinal cortex, most of the perirhinal cortex and subiculum, the amygdala (except parts of the dorsal-most nuclei-central and medial), anterior half of the hippocampus, and the dentate gyrus (posterior head and body). The posterior parahippocampal gyrus and medial temporal stem were partially damaged. Spared medial temporal lobe tissue included the dorsal-most amygdala, the hippocampal-amygdalo-transition-area, ∼2 cm of the tail of the hippocampus, a small part of perirhinal cortex, a small portion of medial hippocampal tissue, and ∼2 cm of posterior parahippocampal gyrus. H.M.'s impact on the field of memory has been remarkable, and his contributions to neuroscience continue with a unique dataset that includes in vivo, in situ, and ex vivo high-resolution MRI., (Copyright © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Purpose: To evaluate B0 shim and motion navigated single voxel spectroscopy in children. Assess the repeatability of metabolite concentrations in three regions: medial frontal grey matter, peritrigonal white matter, and basal ganglia. Determine the extent of intra- and interacquisition movement in this population., Methods: Linewidth and signal to noise ratio were calculated to assess spectral quality of 186 spectra at 3 Tesla. Repeatability was assessed on 31 repeat scans. Navigator images were used to assess localization errors, while navigator motion and shim logs were used to demonstrate the efficacy of correction needed during the scans., Results: Average linewidths ± standard deviations of N-acetyl aspartate are 3.8 ± 0.6 Hz, 4.4 ± 0.5 Hz, and 4.7 ± 0.8 Hz in each region, respectively. Scan-to-scan measurement variance in metabolite concentrations closely resembled the expected variance. A total of 73% and 32% of children moved before and during the acquisition, causing a voxel shift of more than 10% of the voxel volume, 1.5 mm. The predominant movement directions were sliding out of the coil and nodding (up-down rotation). First-order B0 corrections were significant (>10 μT/m) in 18 % of acquisitions., Conclusion: Prospective motion and B0 correction provides high quality repeatable spectra. The study found that most children moved between acquisitions and a substantial number moved during acquisitions., (© 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Recent advancements in radio frequency coils, field strength and sophisticated pulse sequences have propelled modern brain mapping and have made validation to biological standards - histology and pathology - possible. The medial temporal lobe has long been established as a pivotal brain region for connectivity, function and unique structure in the human brain, and reveals disconnection in mild Alzheimer's disease. Specific brain mapping of mesocortical areas affected with neurofibrillary tangle pathology early in disease progression provides not only an accurate description for location of these areas but also supplies spherical coordinates that allow comparison between other ex vivo cases and larger in vivo datasets. We have identified several cytoarchitectonic features in the medial temporal lobe with high resolution ex vivo MRI, including gray matter structures such as the entorhinal layer II 'islands', perirhinal layer II-III columns, presubicular 'clouds', granule cell layer of the dentate gyrus as well as lamina of the hippocampus. Localization of Brodmann areas 28 and 35 (entorhinal and perirhinal, respectively) demonstrates MRI based area boundaries validated with multiple methods and histological stains. Based on our findings, both myelin and Nissl staining relate to contrast in ex vivo MRI. Precise brain mapping serves to create modern atlases for cortical areas, allowing accurate localization with important applications to detecting early disease processes., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The Magnetization-Prepared 2 Rapid Acquisition Gradient Echo (MP2RAGE) method achieves spatially uniform contrast across the entire brain between gray matter and surrounding white matter tissue and cerebrospinal fluid by rapidly acquiring data at two points during an inversion recovery, and then combining the two volumes so as to cancel out sources of intensity and contrast bias, making it useful for neuroimaging studies at ultrahigh field strengths (≥7T). To quantify the effectiveness of the MP2RAGE method for quantitative morphometric neuroimaging, we performed tissue segmentation and cerebral cortical surface reconstruction of the MP2RAGE data and compared the results with those generated from conventional multi-echo MPRAGE (MEMPRAGE) data across a group of healthy subjects. To do so, we developed a preprocessing scheme for the MP2RAGE image data to allow for automatic cortical segmentation and surface reconstruction using FreeSurfer and analysis methods to compare the positioning of the surface meshes. Using image volumes with 1mm isotropic voxels we found a scan-rescan reproducibility of cortical thickness estimates to be 0.15 mm (or 6%) for the MEMPRAGE data and a slightly lower reproducibility of 0.19 mm (or 8%) for the MP2RAGE data. We also found that the thickness estimates were systematically smaller in the MP2RAGE data, and that both the interior and exterior cortical boundaries estimated from the MP2RAGE data were consistently positioned within the corresponding boundaries estimated from the MEMPRAGE data. Therefore several measureable differences exist in the appearance of cortical gray matter and its effect on automatic segmentation methods that must be considered when choosing an acquisition or segmentation method for studies requiring cortical surface reconstructions. We propose potential extensions to the MP2RAGE method that may help to reduce or eliminate these discrepancies., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

This review focuses on the ex vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) modeling of medial temporal cortices and associated structures, the entorhinal verrucae and the perforant pathway. Typical in vivo MRI has limited resolution due to constraints on scan times and does not show laminae in the medial temporal lobe. Recent studies using ex vivo MRI have demonstrated lamina in the entorhinal, perirhinal, and hippocampal cortices. These studies have enabled probabilistic brain mapping that is based on the ex vivo MRI contrast, validated to histology, and subsequently mapped onto an in vivo spherically warped surface model. Probabilistic maps are applicable to other in vivo studies., (Copyright © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

The perirhinal cortex (Brodmann's area 35) is a multimodal area that is important for normal memory function. Specifically, perirhinal cortex is involved in the detection of novel objects and manifests neurofibrillary tangles in Alzheimer's disease very early in disease progression. We scanned ex vivo brain hemispheres at standard resolution (1 mm × 1 mm × 1 mm) to construct pial/white matter surfaces in FreeSurfer and scanned again at high resolution (120 μm × 120 μm × 120 μm) to determine cortical architectural boundaries. After labeling perirhinal area 35 in the high resolution images, we mapped the high resolution labels to the surface models to localize area 35 in fourteen cases. We validated the area boundaries determined using histological Nissl staining. To test the accuracy of the probabilistic mapping, we measured the Hausdorff distance between the predicted and true labels and found that the median Hausdorff distance was 4.0mm for the left hemispheres (n=7) and 3.2mm for the right hemispheres (n=7) across subjects. To show the utility of perirhinal localization, we mapped our labels to a subset of the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative dataset and found decreased cortical thickness measures in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease compared to controls in the predicted perirhinal area 35. Our ex vivo probabilistic mapping of the perirhinal cortex provides histologically validated, automated and accurate labeling of architectonic regions in the medial temporal lobe, and facilitates the analysis of atrophic changes in a large dataset for earlier detection and diagnosis., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Prospective motion correction methods using an optical system, diffusion-weighted prospective acquisition correction, or a free induction decay navigator have recently been applied to correct for motion in diffusion tensor imaging. These methods have some limitations and drawbacks. This article describes a novel technique using a three-dimensional-echo planar imaging navigator, of which the contrast is independent of the b-value, to perform prospective motion correction in diffusion weighted images, without having to reacquire volumes during which motion occurred, unless motion exceeded some preset thresholds. Water phantom and human brain data were acquired using the standard and navigated diffusion sequences, and the mean and whole brain histogram of the fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity were analyzed. Our results show that adding the navigator does not influence the diffusion sequence. With head motion, the whole brain histogram-fractional anisotropy shows a shift toward lower anisotropy with a significant decrease in both the mean fractional anisotropy and the fractional anisotropy histogram peak location (P<0.01), whereas the whole brain histogram-mean diffusivity shows a shift toward higher diffusivity with a significant increase in the mean diffusivity (P<0.01), even after retrospective motion correction. These changes in the mean and the shape of the histograms are recovered substantially in the prospective motion corrected data acquired using the navigated sequence., (Copyright © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

A method is presented to correct the effects of motion and motion-related B(0) perturbations on spectroscopic imaging in real time through the use of a volumetric navigator. It is demonstrated that, for an axial slice, lifting the chin significantly disrupts the B(0) homogeneity in the zero-order (frequency), first-order Y (coronal) axis and second-order ZY term. This volumetric navigator is able to measure and correct in real time both head pose and zero- to first-order B(0) inhomogeneities. The volumetric navigator was validated in six volunteers who deliberately lifted and then dropped their chin during the scan. These scans show that motion correction alone is not sufficient to recover the spectral quality. By applying real-time shim adjustments, spectral quality was fully recovered to linewidths below 0.08 ppm and the signal-to-noise ratio to within acceptable limits in five of six subjects. In the sixth subject, 83% of the spectra within the volume of interest were recovered, compared with the worst case nonshim-corrected scan, where none of the voxels fell within these quality bounds. It is shown that the use of a volumetric navigator comes at no additional cost to the scan time or spectral signal-to-noise ratio., (Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

Entorhinal cortex (EC) is a medial temporal lobe area critical to memory formation and spatial navigation that is among the earliest parts of the brain affected by Alzheimer's disease (AD). Accurate localization of EC would thus greatly facilitate early detection and diagnosis of AD. In this study, we used ultra-high resolution ex vivo MRI to directly visualize the architectonic features that define EC rostrocaudally and mediolaterally, then applied surface-based registration techniques to quantify the variability of EC with respect to cortical geometry, and made predictions of its location on in vivo scans. The results indicate that EC can be localized quite accurately based on cortical folding patterns, within 3 mm in vivo, a significant step forward in our ability to detect the earliest effects of AD when clinical intervention is most likely to be effective.

There is still limited knowledge about the relationship between different structural brain parameters, despite huge progress in analysis of neuroimaging data. The aim of the present study was to test the relationship between fractional anisotropy (FA) from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and regional white matter (WM) volume. As WM volume has been shown to develop until middle age, the focus was on changes in WM properties in the age range of 40 to 60 years. 100 participants were scanned with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Each hemisphere was parcellated into 35 WM regions, and volume, FA, axial, and radial diffusion in each region were calculated. The relationships between age and the regional measures of FA and WM volume were tested, and then FA and WM volume were correlated, corrected for intracranial volume, age, and sex. WM volume was weakly related to age, while FA correlated negatively with age in 26 of 70 regions, caused by a mix of reduced axial and increased radial diffusion with age. 23 relationships between FA and WM volume were found, with seven being positive and sixteen negative. The positive correlations were mainly caused by increased radial diffusion. It is concluded that FA is more sensitive than volume to changes in WM integrity during middle age, and that FA-age correlations probably are related to reduced amount of myelin with increasing age. Further, FA and WM volume are moderately to weakly related and to a large extent sensitive to different characteristics of WM integrity.

In brain morphometry studies using magnetic resonance imaging, several scans with a range of contrasts are often collected. The images may be locally distorted due to imperfect shimming in regions where magnetic susceptibility changes rapidly, and all scans may not be distorted in the same way. In multispectral studies it is critical that the edges of structures align precisely across all contrasts. The MPRAGE (MPR) sequence has excellent contrast properties for cortical segmentation, while multiecho FLASH (MEF) provides better contrast for segmentation of subcortical structures. Here, a multiecho version of the MPRAGE (MEMPR) is evaluated using SIENA and FreeSurfer. The higher bandwidth of the MEMPR results in reduced distortions that match those of the MEF while the SNR is recovered by combining the echoes. Accurate automatic identification of cortex and thickness estimation is frustrated by the presence of dura adjacent to regions such as the entorhinal cortex. In the typical MPRAGE protocol, dura and cortex are approximately isointense. However, dura has substantially smaller T2* than cortex. This information is represented in the multiple echoes of the MEMPR. An algorithm is described for correcting cortical thickness using T2*. It is shown that with MEMPR, SIENA generates more reliable percentage brain volume changes and FreeSurfer generates more reliable cortical models. The regions where cortical thickness is affected by dura are shown. MEMPR did not substantially improve subcortical segmentations. Since acquisition time is the same for MEMPR as for MPRAGE, and it has better distortion properties and additional T2* information, MEMPR is recommended for morphometry studies.