In vivo mapping of hippocampal venous vasculature and oxygen saturation using dual-echo SWI/QSM on 7T: a potential marker for neurodegeneration

In this study, we reconstructed the venous drainage course of Basal vein of Rosenthal (BVR) and its tributaries using dual-echo SWI/QSM. Consistent with existing knowledge of venous anatomy, our results show that BVR drains blood from multiple tissue structures such as insula, amygdala and hippocampus. Inferior ventricular vein (IVV) and medial atrial vein (MAV), two tributaries of BVR, are anatomically relevant to the venous drainage in hippocampus. With the proposed technique, we extracted the venous blood susceptibility value in BVR and IVV/MAV to examine its feasibility in characterizing changes of venous oxygenation level related to hippocampal neurodegeneration.