Posted by Annapaola Prestia Laboratory of Epidemiology Neuroimaging and Telemedicine, IRCCS Centro San Giovanni di Dio FBF, The National Centre for Research and Care of Alzheimer’s and Mental Diseases, Brescia, Italy

Viscoelasticity is a sensitive measure of the microstructural constitution of soft biological tissue and it is going to be increasingly used as a diagnostic marker in many pathologies. Combining MRI with acoustic waves is a new and promising way to measure cerebral viscoelasticity without intervention. The purpose of this study was to set up a clinically applicable assay of multifrequency MRI of the brain and to measure cerebral viscoelasticity as a function of age and sex in 55 individuals. The hypothesis was that the viscoelasticity of the brain might be sensitive to widespread structural alterations occurring in the course of physiological aging. Subject were healthy volunteers (23 females, 22 males) ranging in age from 18 to 88 years. Significant sex differences were found in female brains, being on average 9% more solid-like than their male counterparts, this rendering women more than a decade ‘younger’ than men in brain mechanics (P=0.016). This new technique for the diagnosis of diffuse pathological processes has proven to be reliable in taking into account age- and sex-related effects on viscoelastic constants of the brain.