Effective bowel motion reduction in mouse abdominal MRI using hyoscine butylbromide

Purpose: Bowel motion is a significant source of artifacts in mouse abdominal MRI. Fasting and administration of hyoscine butylbromide (BUSC) have been proposed for bowel motion reduction but with inconsistent results and limited efficacy assessments. Here, we evaluate these regimes for mouse abdominal MRI at high field. Methods: Thirty-two adult C57BL/6J mice were imaged on a 9.4T scanner with a FLASH sequence, acquired over 90 min with similar to 19 s temporal resolution. During MRI acquisition, 8 mice were injected with a low-dose and 8 mice with a high-dose bolus of BUSC (0.5 and 5 mg/kg, respectively). Eight mice were food deprived for 4.5-6.5 hours before MRI and another group of eight mice was injected with saline during MRI acquisition. Two expert readers reviewed the images and classified bowel motion, and quantitative voxel-wise analyses were performed for identification of moving regions. After defining the most effective protocol, high-resolution T2 -weighted and diffusion-weighted images were acquired from 4 mice. Results: High-dose BUSC was the most effective protocol for bowel motion reduction, for up to 45 min. Fasting and saline protocols were not effective in suppressing bowel motion. High-resolution abdominal MRI clearly demonstrated improved image quality and ADC quantification with the high-dose BUSC protocol. Conclusion: Our data show that BUSC administration is advantageous for abdominal MRI in the mouse. Specifically, it endows significant bowel motion reduction, with relatively short onset timings after injection similar to 8.5 min) and relatively long duration of the effect (similar to 45 min). These features improve the quality of high-resolution images of the mouse abdomen.