Location: MIC-Arena, Maria-Goeppert-Str. 3, 23562 Lübeck
Title: "Challenges of validating MRI-based in vivo histology"
This talk will present a novel in vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) framework for measuring micro-scale compartments in the human brain such as myelin or axon density. This framework will use biophysical models to relate the signal of five different quantitative MRI techniques (relaxometry, diffusion MRI, magnetization transfer, quantitative phase, and proton density imaging) to micro-scale compartments. The gold-standard technique to measure these tissue compartments is ex vivo histology. To find the best biophysical metric for myelin or axon density, the MRI data need to be quantitatively compared to the corresponding marker from ex vivo histology. Here, we focus on the challenges associated with bringing the 3D MRI data, acquired at a resolution of millimeters across the whole brain (20 cm diameters), together with 2D ex vivo histology, acquired at a resolution of microns within small junks of tissue (less than 1mm diameter).
