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In vivo MRI

Research group 8.12

IMAGEN


The EU study IMAGEN investigates the risk behavior of young people. In the initial step, a total of 2500 young people (all of them 14 years of age) were questioned, tested and measured for approx. 10 hours – partly with the involvement of their parents – at eight European centers.

PTB hereby took on the MRI measurements of the Berlin Center (Charité). This gives us an insight into the difficulties which are encountered in a real study with MR scanners of four different manufacturers. Here, the Working Group contributes its competences in the field of standardization and quality control. The comparability of the quantities obtained from the MR images is shown in the left diagram using the example of the brain cortex thickness of a volunteer. The volunteer was measured twice and shows, in the eight centers, different cortex thicknesses in the brain areas V1 and BA3b. PTB- developed artifacts (called "phantoms") with tested geometry as shown in the picture on the right, are used in order to characterize in detail the MR scanner involved in the study.

As the development of the behavior of these young people over time is of special interest, the study was repeated after four years on the same test persons, who were now approx. 18 years old. A new determination of the measurement parameters is planned for the years between 2016 and 2018, when the test persons will be 21 years old.

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