1.5 tesla scanner

A Dixon-based MRI sequence was used on a 1.5-Tesla Siemens scanner to obtain images from the neck to the knee (excluding arms). Three hundred and eighty-four contiguous, axial T1-weighted gradient-echo images with a slice thickness of 3 mm were acquired, from which fat and water images were produced as part of the Dixon sequence. MRI data were analysed using the open-source image analysis software HOROS V 1.1.7 (www.horosproject.org; accessed 21/10/2017) by a single analyst who was blinded to clinical data. Areas of visceral adipose tissue (VAT) were quantified from an axial MRI image at the L4-5 spinal anatomical position.
Assessments were performed in random order at the Clinical Research Facility, King’s College Hospital, London, UK, while MRI imaging took place at Guy’s Hospital, London, UK, with at least 7 days between visits.

MRI images of all patients were acquired before surgery using a 1.5 Tesla scanner (Siemens Espree, Erlangen, Germany). DICOM images of axial T1CE with a thickness of 1 mm were collected. The parameters for T1CE were as follows, Slice thickness = 1 mm, Field-of-view = 130 mm, Matrix size = 512 × 512 × 176, Flip angle = 15^°, Echo time = 3.02 ms, Repetition time = 1,650 ms, and Voxel dimensions = 0.997 × 0.997 × 1 mm³. Coronal and sagittal T1CE images were reconstructed from thin-sliced axial T1CE images with 3D Slicer software (version 4.10, Harvard University, Boston, United States).

CMR was accomplished using a 1.5-Tesla scanner (Siemens Avanto, Erlangen, Germany) with an 8-element cardiac-phased array receiver surface coil.

Ten brains (five females with age range of 59–86 years, and five males with age range of 30–75 years, mean age of 65, 8 years) were obtained from the body donor program of the Department of Anatomy at the University Hospital Düsseldorf of the Heinrich-Heine-University in accordance with legal requirements with no indications of neurologic or psychiatric diseases in clinical records. The postmortem delay did not exceed 24–36 h (Table 1). The brains were fixed in 4% buffered formalin (pH 7.4) or Bodian’s fixative for at least 6 months. All brains underwent magnetic resonance imaging on a Siemens 1.5 Tesla scanner (Erlangen, Germany) using a T1-weighted 3D FLASH sequence (flip angle 40°, repetition time TR 40 ms, echo time TE 5 ms). Obtained images were used as an undistorted spatial reference for the 3D-reconstruction of the histological sections as previously described (Bludau et al., 2014 (link)).
Brains were embedded in paraffin and serially sectioned in the coronal plane on a large-scale microtome (thickness of 20 μm). Every 15th section (corresponding to a distance of 300 μm) was mounted on a glass slide covered with gelatin, stained for cell bodies using a silver staining technique (Merker, 1983 (link)), and digitized on a flatbed scanner (resolution of 1,200 dpi). At least every 60th section was analyzed (distance between them of 1.200 μm).