RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Studying magnetic susceptibility, microstructural compartmentalisation and chemical exchange in a formalin-fixed ex vivo human brain specimen
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.07.30.454493
DO 10.1101/2021.07.30.454493
A1 Chan, Kwok-Shing
A1 Hédouin, Renaud
A1 Mollink, Jeroen
A1 Schulz, Jenni
A1 Walsum, Anne-Marie van Cappellen van
A1 Marques, José P.
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/08/01/2021.07.30.454493.abstract
AB Purpose Ex vivo imaging is a preferable method to study the biophysical mechanism of white matter orientation-dependent signal phase evolution. Yet, how formalin fixation, commonly used for tissue preservation, affects the phase measurement is not fully known. We, therefore, study the impacts of formalin fixation on magnetic susceptibility, microstructural compartmentalisation and chemical exchange measurement on human brain tissue.Methods A formalin-fixed, post-mortem human brain specimen was scanned with multiple orientations with respect to the main magnetic field direction for robust bulk magnetic susceptibility measurement with conventional quantitative susceptibility imaging models. Homogeneous white matter tissues were subsequently excised from the whole-brain specimen and scanned in multiple rotations on an MRI scanner to measure the anisotropic magnetic susceptibility and microstructure-related contributions in the signal phase. Electron microscopy was used to validate the MRI findings.Results The bulk isotropic magnetic susceptibility of ex vivo whole-brain imaging is comparable to in vivo imaging, with noticeable enhanced non-susceptibility contributions. The excised specimen experiment reveals that anisotropic magnetic susceptibility and compartmentalisation phase effect were considerably reduced in formalin-fixed white matter tissue.Conclusions Despite formalin-fixed white matter tissue has comparable bulk isotropic magnetic susceptibility to those measured via in vivo imaging, its orientation-dependent components in the signal phase related to the tissue microstructure is substantially weaker, making it less favourable in white matter microstructure studies using phase imaging.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.