1 Department of Physics, Concordia University, 1455 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8, Canada. Julia.Huck@mail.concordia.ca.
2 Department of Physics, Concordia University, 1455 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8, Canada.
3 Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany.
4 Stanford University, Stanford, USA.
5 Max-Planck-Institut fur Kognitions- und Neurowissenschaften, Leipzig, Germany.
6 Clinic for Cognitive Neurology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
7 Leipzig University Medical Centre, IFB Adiposity Diseases, Leipzig, Germany.
8 Leipzig University Medical Centre, Collaborative Research Centre, 1052-A5, Leipzig, Germany.
9 Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.
10 Department of Biomedical Engineering, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
11 Montreal Neurological Institute, Montreal, Canada.
12 Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
13 Montreal Heart Institute, Montreal, Canada.

High resolution atlas of the venous brain vasculature from 7 T quantitative susceptibility maps.

Brain Struct Funct. 2019 Jul 05;:

Authors: Huck J, Wanner Y, Fan AP, Jäger AT, Grahl S, Schneider U, Villringer A, Steele CJ, Tardif CL, Bazin PL, Gauthier CJ

Abstract

The vascular organization of the human brain can determine neurological and neurophysiological functions, yet thus far it has not been comprehensively mapped. Aging and diseases such as dementia are known to be associated with changes to the vasculature and normative data could help detect these vascular changes in neuroimaging studies. Furthermore, given the well-known impact of venous vessels on the blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal, information about the common location of veins could help detect biases in existing datasets. In this work, a quantitative atlas of the venous vasculature using quantitative susceptibility maps (QSM) acquired with a 0.6-mm isotropic resolution is presented. The Venous Neuroanatomy (VENAT) atlas was created from 5 repeated 7 Tesla MRI measurements in young and healthy volunteers (n?=?20, 10 females, mean age?=?25.1?±?2.5 years) using a two-step registration method on 3D segmentations of the venous vasculature. This cerebral vein atlas includes the average vessel location, diameter (mean: 0.84?±?0.33 mm) and curvature (0.11?±?0.05 mm-1) from all participants and provides an in vivo measure of the angio-architectonic organization of the human brain and its variability. This atlas can be used as a basis to understand changes in the vasculature during aging and neurodegeneration, as well as vascular and physiological effects in neuroimaging.

PMID: 31278570 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]