ISMRM24 - Forensic & Histology MRI: Bridging Physics, Biology & Pathology

Forensic & Histology MRI: Bridging Physics, Biology & Pathology

Weekday Course

ORGANIZERS: Najat Salameh, Rita Schmidt

Monday, 06 May 2024

Summit 1

13:45 - 15:45

Moderators: Le Roy Chong & Cornelia Laule

Skill Level: Basic to Advanced

Session Number: M-02

CME Credit

Session Number: M-02

Overview
Forensic MR technology and radiology is continuously evolving and can offer important set of tools to the toolkit available for the forensic investigations. Forensic MRI includes development of a post-mortem imaging alternative to autopsy (used to differentiate between natural and traumatic deaths), uncover supplementary investigational findings in disease and injury, along with high resolution histology. This course will discuss the relevant MRI pulse sequences, such as STIR, FLAIR, UTE – and their usage for pathology or injury assessment – including evolution of hemorrhage and bleeding, the presence of gas within vessels or organs and its interpretation, fracture detection and potential age estimation. The course will touch on the challenges and opportunities that MRI has to offer for forensic investigations. It will also discuss quantitative MRI for anatomy and histology – using T1, T2 and magnetization transfer ratio mapping using biophysical models, which can offer complementing information to the classical invasive histology.

Target Audience
Scientists, radiologists, engineers, and clinicians.

Educational Objectives
As a result of attending this course, participants should be able to:
- Describe MRI pulse sequences in use in forensic MRI;
- Explain the physics aspects of forensic MRI – artifacts, high iron different bleeding evolution, gas content and chemical shift effects
- Summarize quantitative MRI approaches used for histology.

13:45		Forensic Brain MRI View Presentation Video Claudia Lenz, Eva Scheurer Keywords: Neuro: Brain Forensic medicine employs scientific disciplines to solve legal queries, with forensic imaging, including MRI, as its newest branch. Postmortem cases are investigated to clarify the cause and manner of death, to reconstruct violent events, to determine the time of death and the presence of diseases. Postmortem MRI faces challenges such as temperature variations, postmortem changes and formalin fixation effects. This talk gives an overview on the advantages and challenges of in situ and ex situ postmortem examinations. It emphasizes methods for adapting MRI techniques for forensic brain MRI, highlighting the current research for forensic purposes and the validation of biomarkers.
14:15		Biophysical Models of Quantitative MRI for Anatomy & Histology View Presentation Video Evgeniya Kirilina Keywords: Neuro: Brain, Contrast mechanisms: Relaxometry Quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (qMRI) expands upon traditional MRI by providing specific physical parameters, like proton density, relaxation rates, diffusion properties of water nuclear spins. These parameters reveal details about local microstructural environments (e.g., brain myelin and iron). Non-invasive in vivo histology via MRI (hMRI) seeks to directly characterize tissue microstructure, potentially replacing or complementing invasive histology. Understanding tissue contrast from hMRI requires biophysical models. This talk explores concepts, models, and validation methods in this area, highlighting challenges and recent progress with the focus on myelin and iron-induced contrasts in the human brain.
14:45		Forensic MRI of the Whole Body: Challenges & Opportunities View Presentation Video Eva Scheurer, Claudia Lenz Keywords: Neuro: Brain TBA
15:15		UTE for Fracture Detection & Age Evaluation Jiang Du Keywords: Musculoskeletal: Skeletal, Image acquisition: Quantification, Image acquisition: Sequences This lecture talks about recent technical developments in ultrashort echo time (UTE) magnetic resonance imaging and applications in fracture detection and age evaluation. A series of techniques have been developed for high contrast imaging of cortical and trabecular bone. Quantitative UTE techniques have also been developed for mapping of T1, T2*, magnetization transfer ratio (MTR), MT modeling of macromolecular fraction (MMF), quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) of bone susceptibility, as well as total, bound, and free water in bone. Applications in fraction detection and age evaluation are also discussed.