[Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging of brain edema from sliced rat brain: preliminary report].
A series of the sliced rat brain were imaged by proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H-NMR) using a Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill sequence. The slices were obtained from the adult male Wistar rats, normal or suffering from vasogenic brain edema at 2, 6, 24Hr, 2Wk and 2Mo period after the application of cryo-injury. The imaging time was arranged 17 to 22 minutes dependently upon signal to noise ratio. The slice thickness was 1.2 mm, and pixel dimensions were 0.2 X 0.2 mm. Whereas a voxel size in our images is mere 1/1,200 compared to that reported about the prototype human NMR imaging devices, high resolution has been realized. The spatial resolution is very fine, as evidenced by the appearance of major internal structures of rat brain, and the object contrast is so high that cerebral white-gray contrast is excellent, although the difference in water concentration between them is only 7%. It has been impossible to measure serially in vivo change in water concentration of small organs as rat brain, NMR has the capability to generate images in response to tissue state of hydration, therefore we can easily recognize the extent and intensity of the brain edema, which has been defined as an expansion of the brain volume resulting from an increase in its fluid content. And in this study, using the prototype mini-NMR-CT of excellent spatial and contrast resolution, we have been able to show this advantage of NMR as a new tool for research in the field of neurological surgery.
D000818:Animals; D001834:Body Water / Q000378:metabolism; D001921:Brain / Q000378:metabolism*; D001929:Brain Edema / Q000378:metabolism*; D009682:Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy; D008297:Male; D051381:Rats