技术前沿| 美通过7T磁共振获得最详细人脑图像 呈现小于0.1毫米的脑组织- 孙胜军 初曙光点评

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神外前沿讯，据美国《科学新闻》网站（sciencenews.org）7月8日报道，经过超过100小时的扫描，美国的研究人员，获得了迄今为止最为详细的整个人类大脑的三维图像。通过强大的7T磁共振（MRI），新图像的分辨率可以清晰呈现直径小于0.1毫米的物体。

扫描显示出杏仁体等大脑构造的生动细节，可以更深入地了解结构的细微变化与创伤后应激障碍等疾病之间的关系。

为了这项研究，波士顿麻省总医院和其他研究人员研究了一名死于病毒性肺炎的58岁女性的大脑。她捐赠的大脑，被认为是健康的，被保存和储存了将近三年。

7T功能强大、扫描时间长以及大脑处于高度静止状态，这些因素导致生成的图像分辨率极高。

研究人员试图找出与昏迷等病症和抑郁症等精神疾病有关的难以发现的大脑异常之处，而这些详细的大脑图像可为他们提供线索。这些图像“有可能增进对健康和患病人脑的结构的了解”。

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孙胜军 点评

随着7T磁共振在神经系统的临床应用，由于其分辨率的显著提高，可以使解剖结构显示更加清晰，对疾病导致的细微变化得以显示，进而提高影像检查的诊断水平，促进临床治疗的进步。例如，轻型脑外伤的影像证据的获得、代谢性疾病的细微改变、继发性癫痫灶的检出以及脑退行性改变的影像变化等等都会有不同程度的提高。

另外，对于一些磁共振功能检查序列的高效、准确完成提供了重要的硬件基础。总之，超高场强磁共振的临床应用，可以推动科研成果产出，促进临床诊疗进步。

孙胜军，首都医科大学附属北京天坛医院神经放射科主任医师，医学博士，研究生导师。

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初曙光  点评

医学影像包含两部分，即显示和解读。7T磁共振在人脑中的应用，无疑使影像的显示能力又上了一个台阶，使人们能够在脑结构层面看到更多原来看不到的东西。

同时，研究人脑又包含结构和功能两部分。人脑的复杂性，可能更多在于人脑活动的动态过程。如何利用7T磁共振研究脑的功能活动同样值得期待。

初曙光 复旦大学附属华山医院影像科，博士，主任医师，硕导。

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报道原文：

A 100-hour MRI scan captured the most detailed look yet at a whole human brain

A device recently approved by the U.S. FDA made extremely precise images of a postmortem sample

Over 100 hours of scanning has yielded a 3-D picture of the whole human brain that’s more detailed than ever before. The new view, enabled by a powerful MRI, has the resolution potentially to spot objects that are smaller than 0.1 millimeters wide.

“We haven’t seen an entire brain like this,” says electrical engineer Priti Balchandani of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, who was not involved in the study. “It’s definitely unprecedented.”

The scan shows brain structures such as the amygdala in vivid detail, a picture that might lead to a deeper understanding of how subtle changes in anatomy could relate to disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder.   

To get this new look, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and elsewhere studied a brain from a 58-year-old woman who died of viral pneumonia. Her donated brain, presumed to be healthy, was preserved and stored for nearly three years.

Before the scan began, researchers built a custom spheroid case of urethane that held the brain still and allowed interfering air bubbles to escape. Sturdily encased, the brain then went into a powerful MRI machine called a 7 Tesla, or 7T, and stayed there for almost five days of scanning.

The strength of the 7T, the length of the scanning time and the fact that the brain was perfectly still led to the high-resolution images, which are described May 31 at bioRxiv.org. Associated videos of the brain, as well as the underlying dataset, are publicly available.

Researchers can’t get the same kind of resolution on brains of living people. For starters, people couldn’t tolerate a 100-hour scan. And even tiny movements, such as those that come from breathing and blood flow, would blur the images.

But pushing the technology further in postmortem samples “gives us an idea of what’s possible,” Balchandani says. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first 7T scanner for clinical imaging in 2017, and large medical centers are increasingly using them to diagnose and study illnesses.

These detailed brain images could hold clues for researchers trying to pinpoint hard-to-see brain abnormalities involved in disorders such as comas and psychiatric conditions such as depression. The images “have the potential to advance understanding of human brain anatomy in health and disease,” the authors write.

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