title: Multimodal imaging of human cerebellum - merging X-ray phase microtomography, magnetic resonance microscopy and histology.
abstract: Imaging modalities including magnetic resonance imaging and X-ray computed tomography are established methods in daily clinical diagnosis of human brain. Clinical equipment does not provide sufficient spatial resolution to obtain morphological information on the cellular level, essential for applying minimally or non-invasive surgical interventions. Therefore, generic data with lateral sub-micrometer resolution have been generated from histological slices post mortem. Sub-cellular spatial resolution, lost in the third dimension as a result of sectioning, is obtained using magnetic resonance microscopy and micro computed tomography. We demonstrate that for human cerebellum grating-based X-ray phase tomography shows complementary contrast to magnetic resonance microscopy and histology. In this study, the contrast-to-noise values of magnetic resonance microscopy and phase tomography were comparable whereas the spatial resolution in phase tomography is an order of magnitude better. The registered data with their complementary information permit the distinct segmentation of tissues within the human cerebellum.
authors.affiliation: Biomaterials Science Center, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Georg
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Schulz
authors.forename: Conny
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Waschkies
authors.forename: Franz
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Pfeiffer
authors.forename: Irene
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Zanette
authors.forename: Timm
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Weitkamp
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: David
authors.forename: Bert
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Müller
mesh_terms: D002531:Cerebellum / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D003952:Diagnostic Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008853:Microscopy; D017356:Synchrotrons; D055114:X-Ray Microtomography