Assessment of molecular dynamics in brain tissue through accelerated diffusion and exchange imaging In medical collaboration with: Max Plank Institute of Psychiatry In academic collaboration with: CUBRIC Scientific Director: Prof. Dr. Bjoern Menze Contact Person(s): Miguel Molina Romero In industrial collaboration with: General Electric Global Research

Keywords: IBBM: image acquisition

Abstract

Diffusion of water molecules and spin-spin relaxation can be measured, in vivo, through MRI. These measurements contain information of the underlying tissue microstructure and thus, they are of interest. In this project we want to, first, assess these two contrasts within a clinical feasible time, using a modified pulse sequence and an accelerated acquisition scheme based on compressed sensing. Second, develop a model, or adapt an existing one, that allows one to extract tissue microstructural information out of the measurements. And third, validate the meaning of this information for brain diseases and brain plasticity in clinical and research environments.

Pictures

Figure 1: Measurement of the Axon distribution in the optic and ciatic nerves using the AxCaliber? method (Assaf et al, MRM 2008). Diffusion data contains information of the microstructure, as can be observed in the figure.

Figure 2: The DSI acquisition allows one to recover the ensemble average propagator with no model assumptions. However this is extremly time consuming and therefore not suitable for several repetition scans in volunteers or patients. Nevertheless, the compressed sensing technique reduce the scannning time as shown by Menzel (Menzel at al, MRM 2011).

Figure 3: MRI Pulse Sequences programming is part of this project, in the image several PGSE acquisitions with different diffusion times are shown. Potentially, these data contain information about the underlying microstructure.

Team

Contact Person(s)

Dr. Miguel Molina Romero

Working Group

Prof. Bjoern Menze

Dr. Miguel Molina Romero

Dr. Pedro Gómez

M.Sc. Xin Liu

Location

Technische Universität München Institut für Informatik / I16 Boltzmannstr. 3 85748 Garching bei München Tel.: +49 89 289-17058 Fax: +49 89 289-17059

Visit our lab at Garching.



internal project page

Please contact Miguel Molina Romero for available student projects within this research project.