Twelve to twenty-four hours after the last of 8 daily MnCl2 injections, a first MRI scanning took place (scan 1). Seven days after scan 1, the second MRI scanning took place (scan 2).
All MEMRI experiments were conducted on a 7T Avance Biospec 70/30 scanner (Bruker BioSpin, Ettlingen, Germany). In brief, essentially as described before (Bedenk et al., 2018 (link)), mice were fixed in supine position on a saddle-shaped receive-only coil. Head fixation was achieved using a stereotactic device and the frontal teeth were fixed with a surgical fiber. Once fixed in the coil, mice were kept anesthetized with an isoflurane-oxygen mixture (1.0–1.5 vol %, with an oxygen flow of 1.2–1.4 L/min) (Delta Select, Germany). A rectal thermometer was used for body temperature monitoring (Thermalert TH-5, Physitemp Instruments, USA). Body temperature was kept between 36.5 and 37.5°C using a water-based heating pad. Pulse rate was continuously monitored by a plethysmographic pulse oxymeter (Nonin 8600V, Nonin Medical Inc., USA).
T1-weighted (T1w) brain images were acquired using a 3D gradient echo pulse sequence [TR = 50 ms, TE = 3.2 ms, matrix size = 128 × 106 × 106 zero filled to 128 × 128 × 128, field of view (FOV) = 16 × 16 × 18 mm3, number of averages = 10, resulting in a spatial resolution of 125 × 125 × 140.6 μm3].
All MEMRI experiments were conducted on a 7T Avance Biospec 70/30 scanner (Bruker BioSpin, Ettlingen, Germany). In brief, essentially as described before (Bedenk et al., 2018 (link)), mice were fixed in supine position on a saddle-shaped receive-only coil. Head fixation was achieved using a stereotactic device and the frontal teeth were fixed with a surgical fiber. Once fixed in the coil, mice were kept anesthetized with an isoflurane-oxygen mixture (1.0–1.5 vol %, with an oxygen flow of 1.2–1.4 L/min) (Delta Select, Germany). A rectal thermometer was used for body temperature monitoring (Thermalert TH-5, Physitemp Instruments, USA). Body temperature was kept between 36.5 and 37.5°C using a water-based heating pad. Pulse rate was continuously monitored by a plethysmographic pulse oxymeter (Nonin 8600V, Nonin Medical Inc., USA).
T1-weighted (T1w) brain images were acquired using a 3D gradient echo pulse sequence [TR = 50 ms, TE = 3.2 ms, matrix size = 128 × 106 × 106 zero filled to 128 × 128 × 128, field of view (FOV) = 16 × 16 × 18 mm3, number of averages = 10, resulting in a spatial resolution of 125 × 125 × 140.6 μm3].