In-vivo imaging of the human thalamus: a comprehensive evaluation of structural imaging approaches for thalamic nuclei differentiation at 7T

The ability to non-invasively image the thalamus and its different nuclei would be highly valuable to neuroscience and neuroradiology, but has remained challenging. Here, we initiated a comprehensive practical review of recent thalamic imaging approaches at 7 Tesla, based on T1, T2, T2* and susceptibility properties. These were all acquired on the same in-vivo brain, to avoid anatomical variability confounds. The images were qualitatively compared to histological atlases. Upon systematic assessment, QSM and GM/WM-optimized MP2RAGE proved the most valuable to differentiate specific nuclei. To our knowledge, this is the most comprehensive evaluation to date of thalamic imaging modalities at 7T.