High-Field Multinuclear MRI Reveals Sodium Relaxation Heterogeneity in Cortical Organoids

Sodium magnetic resonance imaging ( ²³ Na MRI) provides a unique opportunity to probe ionic microenvironments in neural tissue because sodium ions play central roles in membrane electrophysiology, ion transport, and cellular homeostasis. Unlike conventional proton (¹H) MRI, which primarily reflects water distribution and tissue structure, ²³Na MRI is sensitive to ionic compartmentation and quadrupolar interactions arising from the spin-3/2 nature of the sodium nucleus. However, sodium MRI remains technically challenging due to intrinsically low signal sensitivity and rapid biexponential relaxation, particularly when imaging small biological systems. Here, we establish a high-field multinuclear MRI platform for imaging human cerebral organoids at 14 Tesla. Cerebral organoids derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells provide a simplified three-dimensional neural tissue model that enables investigation of ionic microenvironments without vascular or systemic confounds. Using a dual-tuned ¹H/²³Na radiofrequency coil, we performed co-registered structural, diffusion, and sodium imaging of individual fixed organoids. High-resolution ¹H MRI (33–100 μm) revealed pronounced microstructural heterogeneity, while multi-echo ²³Na MRI (300–400 μm) enabled voxel-wise characterization of quadrupolar relaxation behavior. Bi-exponential analysis of the sodium signal decay identified distinct relaxation components (T2* _short ≈ 1 ms and T2* _long ≈ 12 ms) and revealed spatial heterogeneity in sodium microenvironments across the organoid tissue. These results demonstrate the feasibility of quantitative sodium relaxometry in cortical organoids and establish a multinuclear imaging platform for investigating ionic microenvironment dynamics in three-dimensional neural tissue models.