Microstructure Imaging of Crossing (MIX) White Matter Fibers from diffusion MRI

Hamza Farooq, Junqian Xu, Jung Who Nam, Daniel F. Keefe, Essa Yacoub, Tryphon Georgiou, Christophe Lenglet

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

38 Scopus citations

Abstract

Diffusion MRI (dMRI) reveals microstructural features of the brain white matter by quantifying the anisotropic diffusion of water molecules within axonal bundles. Yet, identifying features such as axonal orientation dispersion, density, diameter, etc., in complex white matter fiber configurations (e.g. crossings) has proved challenging. Besides optimized data acquisition and advanced biophysical models, computational procedures to fit such models to the data are critical. However, these procedures have been largely overlooked by the dMRI microstructure community and new, more versatile, approaches are needed to solve complex biophysical model fitting problems. Existing methods are limited to models assuming single fiber orientation, relevant to limited brain areas like the corpus callosum, or multiple orientations but without the ability to extract detailed microstructural features. Here, we introduce a new and versatile optimization technique (MIX), which enables microstructure imaging of crossing white matter fibers. We provide a MATLAB implementation of MIX, and demonstrate its applicability to general microstructure models in fiber crossings using synthetic as well as ex-vivo and in-vivo brain data.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number38927
JournalScientific reports
Volume6
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 16 2016

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 The Author(s).

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