Quantitative 7T phase imaging in premanifest Huntington disease.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: In vivo MR imaging and postmortem neuropathologic studies have demonstrated elevated iron concentration and atrophy within the striatum of patients with Huntington disease, implicating neuronal loss and iron accumulation in the pathogenesis of this neurodegenerative disorder. We used 7T MR imaging to determine whether quantitative phase, a measurement that reflects both iron content and tissue microstructure, is altered in subjects with premanifest Huntington disease. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Local field shift, calculated from 7T MR phase images, was quantified in 13 subjects with premanifest Huntington disease and 13 age- and sex-matched controls. All participants underwent 3T and 7T MR imaging, including volumetric T1 and 7T gradient recalled-echo sequences. Local field shift maps were created from 7T phase data and registered to caudate ROIs automatically parcellated from the 3T T1 images. Huntington disease-specific disease burden and neurocognitive and motor evaluations were also performed and compared with local field shift. RESULTS: Subjects with premanifest Huntington disease had smaller caudate volume and higher local field shift than controls. A significant correlation between these measurements was not detected, and prediction accuracy for disease state improved with inclusion of both variables. A positive correlation between local field shift and genetic disease burden was also found, and there was a trend toward significant correlations between local field shift and neurocognitive tests of working memory and executive function. CONCLUSIONS: Subjects with premanifest Huntington disease exhibit differences in 7T MR imaging phase within the caudate nuclei that correlate with genetic disease burden and trend with neurocognitive assessments. Ultra-high-field MR imaging of quantitative phase may be a useful approach for monitoring neurodegeneration in premanifest Huntington disease.

Hippocampal CA1 apical neuropil atrophy in mild Alzheimer disease visualized with 7-T MRI.

OBJECTIVES: In Alzheimer disease (AD), mounting evidence points to a greater role for synaptic loss than neuronal loss. Supporting this notion, multiple postmortem studies have demonstrated that the hippocampal CA1 apical neuropil is one of the earliest sites of pathology, exhibiting tau aggregates and then atrophy before there is substantial loss of the CA1 pyramidal neurons themselves. In this cross-sectional study, we tested whether tissue loss in the CA1 apical neuropil layer can be observed in vivo in patients with mild AD. METHODS: We performed ultra-high-field 7-T MRI on subjects with mild AD (n = 14) and age-matched normal controls (n = 16). With a 2-dimensional T2*-weighted gradient-recalled echo sequence that was easily tolerated by subjects, we obtained cross-sectional slices of the hippocampus at an in-plane resolution of 195 µm. RESULTS: On images revealing the anatomic landmarks of hippocampal subfields and strata, we observed thinning of the CA1 apical neuropil in subjects with mild AD compared to controls. By contrast, the 2 groups exhibited no difference in the thickness of the CA1 cell body layer or of the entire CA1 subfield. Hippocampal volume, measured on a conventional T1-weighted sequence obtained at 3T, also did not differentiate these patients with mild AD from controls. CONCLUSIONS: CA1 apical neuropil atrophy is apparent in patients with mild AD. With its superior spatial resolution, 7-T MRI permits in vivo analysis of a very focal, early site of AD pathology.

Very-high-field magnetic resonance imaging: instrumentation and safety issues.

Because of their advantage in terms of signal-to-noise ratio, high-field magnetic resonance imaging systems have become favored in the last few years for functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) applications. In many ways the conceptual development of these high-field scanners has involved more-or-less straightforward extensions of practices at lower field strengths. However, in other ways specific engineering challenges have been encountered and largely overcome in the quest for scanners capable of realizing the advantages of high-field systems. An understanding of the technical trade-offs that can be made in terms of hardware performance is useful in deciding on the optimum system for a given fMRI application. In this article the technical issues surrounding high-field scanning are reviewed in the context of a typical brain mapping protocol. In addition there is a discussion of the safety issues related to the use of these systems.

Lactate detection at 3T: compensating J coupling effects with BASING.

Detection of lactate by in vivo 1H magnetic resonance spectroscopy may provide a means of identifying regions of metabolic stress in brain and other human tissue, potentially identifying regional ischemia in stroke or necrosis in tumors. At higher field strengths (3 and 4 T), which have recently become available for whole-body human studies, the chemical shift difference between the doublet from the methyl protons and the quartet from the methine proton becomes comparable to the available radiofrequency (RF) pulse bandwidth. In this case "anomalous" J modulation occurs in PRESS and STEAM because the coupling partner of the observed resonance may or may not be refocused by the RF pulses depending on the position of the molecule within the voxel and the size of the chemical shift misregistration artifact. These anomalies lead to signal cancellation for echo times near odd multiples of 1/J (often used to highlight the inverted lactate doublet against nearby lipid peaks) in single voxel studies, and spatial variation of the doublet lineshape in chemical shift imaging studies, producing erroneous determination of relative lactate concentrations. While increasing the band-width of the RF pulses can reduce this effect by reducing the signal cancellation, some cancellation will always remain. A means of eliminating this effect using BASING/ MEGA (Mescher M et al. Solvent suppression using selective echo dephasing J Magn Reson A 1996;123:226-229; Star-Lack J et al. Improved water and lipid suppression for 3D PRESS CSI using RF band selective inversion with gradient dephasing (BASING). Magn Reson Med 1997;38: 311-321) water suppression pulses will be described, along with some of its limitations.

Chemical shift imaging of human brain: axial, sagittal, and coronal P-31 metabolite images.

Multivoxel magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopy and novel data analysis techniques were developed to obtain high-quality phosphorus-31 metabolite images from the human brain and to overlay each metabolite distribution directly onto corresponding hydrogen-1 MR images. The P-31 MR spectroscopic data were acquired by means of three-dimensional chemical shift imaging (phase encoding in three spatial dimensions) on a 1.5-T clinical instrument equipped with a specially designed quadrature P-31 birdcage coil constructed in the authors' laboratory. Axial, sagittal, and coronal metabolite images based on the area for any one of five peak regions (phosphodiester; phosphocreatine; gamma, alpha, and beta adenosine triphosphate) were generated from 8 X 8 X 8 or 12 X 12 X 8 CSI arrays with voxel sizes of 27 cm3 and 12 cm3, respectively. The positions of these images were aligned with anatomic features by means of the voxel-shifting capability of the Fourier transform. Direct overlays of these metabolite images on corresponding proton images demonstrated excellent correlation with anatomy, factors indicating the utility of this technique for viewing P-31 metabolite levels in all areas of the brain simultaneously.