Scenes from the Past: MR Imaging versus CT of Ancient Peruvian and Egyptian Mummified Tissues

Abstract

Ancient Egyptian and Peruvian mummies are extremely valuable historical remains, and noninvasive methods for their examination are desirable. The current standard of reference for radiologic imaging of mummies is computed tomography (CT), with tissue having a homogeneous appearance on all CT images. It was long believed that ancient mummified tissue could not be studied with magnetic resonance (MR) imaging because of the low water content in mummies. Recently, however, the usefulness of MR imaging in the evaluation of mummified tissue was demonstrated for the first time, with use of a special ultrashort echo time technique. The authors of the present study acquired and analyzed MR imaging and CT data from the left hands of two ancient Egyptian mummies and the head of a third Egyptian mummy (ca 1500-1100 bce), as well as data from an ancient Peruvian mummy (ca 1100 ce). CT was found to provide superior detail of the anatomic structures, mainly because of its higher spatial resolution. The signal intensity of mummified tissue varied greatly on MR images; thus, the quality of these images is not yet comparable to that of clinical MR images, and further research will be needed to determine the full capacity of MR imaging in this setting. Nevertheless, additional information may theoretically be obtained with MR imaging, which should be viewed as complementary to, rather than a replacement for, CT.

CT Scan of Thirteen Natural Mummies Dating Back to the XVI-XVIII Centuries: An Emerging Tool to Investigate Living Conditions and Diseases in History

“…The intentional mummification process was actually, diffuse among some relevant people of the Church or, before, in ancient Egypt among Pharaons. However, a rare possibility of non-intentional, natural process of mummification, primed by environmental conditions exists and can represent a huge source of investigation for paleoanthropological, paleopathological and paleoradiological research [ 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 ]. Radiology rose its interest on study of mummified bodies and paleoradiological studies guaranteed more and more accurate and non-invasive evaluation of anatomical structures and physical integrity [ 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 ].…”

Checklist and Scoring System for the Assessment of Soft Tissue Preservation in CT Examinations of Human Mummies

“…Furthermore, the inter-individual variation of the musculature and the possibility of muscular atrophy as a result of immobility or disease before death make this feature quite variable already in its ante-mortem occurrence. In contrast, tendons are easily detectable in CT examinations of mummies as they are anatomically relatively hyper-dense structures [ 7 ]. Therefore, we defined the common character “Tendons and/or Musculature” as a subcategory, and given its ubiquity across the body we divided it into 16 anatomical regions.…”

Short Review: Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Ancient Mummies

“…Hitherto, only CT could differentiate such altered soft‐tissue in historic remains. This desired increase in diagnostic evidence in historic samples could be gained de facto by the introduction of new imaging modalities, such as clinical and nonclinical MRI, which shall be validated with established diagnostic techniques, such as CT. For an enhanced spatial morphological assessment, one shall typically apply correlatively state‐of‐the‐art CT techniques as well as non‐clinical and clinical MRI techniques as outlined recently by Öhrström et al (). This includes, for example, clinical MR settings with ultra‐short echo time sequences.…”