Science is Fun Fridays!
After decades of work, scientists have managed to produce MRI scans of a mouse brain that are 64 million times sharper than previously achieved, providing new levels of detail to help us visualize conditions affecting the brain.
Research was led by a team at the Center for In Vivo Microscopy at Duke University. They used a much more powerful magnet within the scanner (9.4 Tesla versus 3), and gradient coils 100 times stronger than those in a normal MRI machine.
The gradient coils produce the deliberate vibrations in the magnetic field, which permits localization of image slices as well as phase and frequency encoding.
When using the new technique on a mouse brain, they also imaged the tissue using a complementary method called light sheet microscopy. Overlaying these images allowed the team to see internal wiring and connections within the brain.
The authors are especially interested in aging, and have documented changes in the connectivity across the brain as the mouse ages. They've been able to map how some regions change more than others, and illustrate the breakdown of neural networks.
"We can start looking at neurodegenerative diseases in an entirely different way," says lead author G. Allen Johnson.
Comments
Post a Comment