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Published July 1998 | public
Journal Article

MR Microscopy of Transgenic Mice that Spontaneously Acquire Experimental Allergic Encephalomyelitis

Abstract

Pathology of fixed spinal cords from transgenic mice with a myelin basic protein (MBP) specific T cell receptor was investigated. These mice spontaneously acquire the demyelinating disease experimental allergic encephalomyelitis (EAE). Several complementary imaging modalities, all on the same tissues, were used to visualize lesions; these included high-field (11.7-T) microscopic diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), T*_2- image-weighted imaging, and optical microscopy on histological sections. Lesions were predominantly in white matter around meninges and vasculature and appeared hyperintense in anatomical images. DTIs showed reduced diffusion anisotropy in the same hyperintense regions, consistent with inflammation and edema. Histology in the same tissues exhibited the characteristic pathology of EAE. Two techniques for visualizing the effective diffusion tensor fields are presented, which display direction, organization, and integrity of neuronal fibers. It is shown that DTI offers intriguing possibilities for visualizing axonal organization and lesions within white matter.

Additional Information

© 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc. Received June 2, 1997; revised January 5, 1998; accepted January 6, 1998. This work is supported, in part, by the Human Brain Project funded jointly by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Science Foundation, and NSF CCR-96-19649. E.T.A. was supported by Grant F32 NS10384 from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. The authors thank L. Hood and D. Zaller for initially supplying us with the transgenics; P. Calderon and S. Mehta at Bruker Instruments and J. Edens and D. De Sha at Caltech for helpful technical support. The authors also thank T. Hudspeth and colleagues at Hughes Aircraft for their expertise in preamplifier design and P. T. Narasimhan and P. Mitra for helpful discussions.

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 18, 2023