Table 1.
Clinical and demographic data of 10 DAI patients.
Table 2.
MR sequence parameters.
Fig 1.
Susceptibility weighted images (SWI) and enlarged regions of interest of a 57 year old female DAI patient (case 6) at 3 T (A, D), at 7 T with equal spatial resolution (B, E), and moreover at 7 T with high spatial resolution (C, F).
At 7 T traumatic microbleeds are depicted larger (“blooming effect”), which allows a better discrimination of small lesions and shows a close relation of the traumatic microbleeds to small transcerebral venoles (white arrow). Note the markedly improved grey/white matter contrast in 7 T images when compared to 3T images.
Fig 2.
SWI images at 3 T (A), 7 T (B), and 7 T with high spatial resolution (C) of a 44 year old male study participant (case 5), who suffered from a traumatic brain injury in childhood.
Images show a line of traumatic microbleeds in the right frontal white matter. Compared to 3 T SW images (A, D) more hemorrhagic DAI lesions are depicted at 7 T with equal (B, E) and higher spatial resolution (C, F) (white arrows).
Fig 3.
SWI images at 3 T (A, D) 7 T (B, E), and 7 T with high spatial resolution (C, F) of a 25 year old female DAI patient (case 7) survived a polytrauma with acute subdural hematoma, cerebral contusions, and DAI from a car accident with frontal collision.
In the splenium (black arrow) more TMB can be discriminated at 3 T SW images (A, D), which merge on 7 T SWI images due to the blooming effect. However, at 7 T SWI images (B, C, E, and F) demonstrate additional TMB in other brain regions like the right frontal white matter (white arrows).
Table 3.
Location and count of DAI-associated TMBs in 10 patients.
Table 4.
Hemorrhagic DAI lesion counts compared between 3T and 7T SWI with equal and high spatial resolution by Wilcoxon signed-rank test.
Table 5.
Comparison of quantity and size of DAI-associated TMBs between field strengths.