Fig. 2

in vivo evidence of alterations in vascular permeability in MJD transgenic mice using DCE-MRI. a Representative DCE-MRI images, acquired with a fat-saturated T1-weighted gradient-echo sequence, of the cerebellum of a wild-type and a transgenic mouse, respectively; signal intensity scale is given on the left side of the image. b Group average tissue enhancement curve produced by the contrast agent in the plasma and in the tissue interstitium using DCE-MRI (6 transgenic, Tg; 7 wild-type, WT). MJD transgenic mice showed higher perfusion (i) and cerebellar blood volume (ii), as well as an increased capillary permeability (iii) and contrast agent accumulation in the cerebellum interstitium (iv), as compared to wild-type controls. Each time unit in the graph corresponds to 125 s, the scan time per dynamic acquisition. c Quantification of total tissue enhancement produced by the circulation of contrast agent in the plasma and in the interstitium, here represented as the AUC in arbitrary units (a.u.), showed a 13-fold increase in MJD mice (Unpaired t test, P = 0.05). Unpaired t test with Welch’s correction, * P ≤ 0.05