Ultra-high resolution MRI of human brain sets new heights

Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital have developed an ultra-high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of an ex vivo human brain which has set new heights.

This seven Tesla (7T) magnetic resonance imaging scanner is a powerful machine offering high levels of magnetic field strength that can depict the structure of an entire human brain. The dataset of the ex vivo human brain specimen was published in a preprint website bioRxiv.

The brain specimen was donated by a 58-year-old woman who had no history of neurological disease and died of non-neurological causes. While the patient had a history of lymphoma and some other ailments, she had no experience with neurological problems or psychiatric disease, which made her brain a valuable specimen for future neurological research.

After fixation in 10% formalin, the specimen was imaged on a 7 Tesla magnetic resonance imaging scanner at 100 µm isotropic resolution using a custom-built 31-channel receive array coil. Single-echo multi-flip Fast Low-Angle SHot (FLASH) data were acquired over 100 hours of scan time (25 hours per flip angle), allowing derivation of a T1 parameter map and synthesized FLASH volumes. This seven Tesla (7T) MRI scanner is the only MRI approved by the FDA for use in the US in 2017.

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This high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging presented an unprecedented view of the three-dimensional neuroanatomy of the human brain. To optimize the utility of this resource, we warped the dataset into standard stereotactic space.

Detailed anatomy of brainstem structures, including (at far right) the inferior olivary nucleus, which coordinates movement.

In the case of the 7T MRI machine used by Edlow and his team, the researchers were seeking to visualize small structures in the brain specimen at a resolution of 100 micrometers – measuring objects just one-tenth of a millimeter in size.

Detailed anatomy of the basal ganglia and midbrain (center) and cerebellum (left).

Magnetic resonance imaging scans work by issuing radio-frequency pulses in a magnetic field via probes with coils or bird-cage like structures. That's then used to create an image.

For reference, click on the link

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/649822v1