It is critically important to be able to accurately assess and quantify the edematous state of the brain that results from different pathological conditions. In general, therapeutic approaches to brain edema require an understanding of both the location and magnitude of disturbances in intracranial volume homeostasis. The present lack of a sensitive, reliable means of measuring brain water non-invasively is a major hindrance to the development of effective therapies for cerebral edema and associated conditions. In this project, we propose to test the hypothesis that a three- dimensional magnetic resonance fast imaging technique can be used to obtain water content in regions commonly affected by ischemic stroke. Specifically, we will test the hypothesis that the spin density is an accurate means to estimate the water content. This hypothesis will be tested on different pathological states of the tissue water. the difficulties associated with obtaining accurate spin density will be dealt with by novel imaging methods using a state-of-the-art imager. Ischemic brain edema is chosen as a test paradigm because our laboratory has extensive experience with a well characterized animal model of ischemic stroke. The variants of this model exhibit different patterns of edema formation that lend themselves to examining differential effects on spin-lattice relaxation, spin-spin relaxation and spin density measurements. A phantom study simulating the dimensions and heterogeneity of the human brain will be use to test the feasibility of this proposed method for future clinical applications.
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