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In vivo determination of T 1 and T 2 in the brain of patients with severe but stable multiple sclerosis
Author(s) -
Larsson H. B. W.,
Frederiksen J.,
Kjær L.,
Henriksen O.,
Olesen J.
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
magnetic resonance in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.696
H-Index - 225
eISSN - 1522-2594
pISSN - 0740-3194
DOI - 10.1002/mrm.1910070106
Subject(s) - multiple sclerosis , white matter , magnetic resonance imaging , gliosis , in vivo , edema , nuclear magnetic resonance , pathology , partial volume , nuclear medicine , t2 relaxation , lateral ventricles , cerebrospinal fluid , medicine , chemistry , spin echo , quantitative susceptibility mapping , radiology , biology , physics , microbiology and biotechnology , psychiatry
Abstract In vivo measurements of relaxation processes in multiple sclerosis (MS) lesions by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may be important for evaluation of the disease activity in individual MS plaques. To obtain information of presumably chronic plaques, 10 patients with severe, but stable MS were investigated, using a whole‐body superconductive MR scanner, operating at 1.5 T. By employing 12‐point (or 6‐point) partial saturation inversion recovery (PSIR) and 32‐echo multiple spin‐echo sequences we measured T 1 and T 2 in MS plaques, white matter, and cortical gray matter. We also focused on the issue, whether T 1 and T 2 relaxation processes in fact were monoexponential. T 1 and T 2 in plaques were found to cover a wide range, which could be explained only by inherent biophysical dis similarity of the plaques, possibly due to differences in disease activity, edema and gliosis. T 1 appeared monoexponential in all the plaques, but in seven cases T 2 showed biexponential behavior. This was found to be most pronounced near the cerebrospinal fluid of the ventricles, probably caused by partial volume effects or increased free water content. The T 2 of apparently normal white matter was significantly longer in MS patients than in healthy subjects. © 1988 Academic Press, Inc.