J. B.M.
Warntjes1, J. West1,2, A. M. Landtblom1,3,
P. Lundberg2
1Center for Medical Imaging Science and
Visualization (CMIV), Linkping, Sweden; 2Department of Medicine
and Health, Division of radiation physics, Linkping, Sweden; 3Department
of Clinical Neuroscience, Linkping, Sweden
A
method is described to measure the myelin related volume fraction for each
voxel for a complete brain within a scan time of 5 to 6 minutes, based on
absolute quantification of the relaxation rates R1 and R2 and proton density.
The absolute decrease of visible PD with a simultaneous increase of R1 and R2
corresponds to an increase of myelin. Myelin related volume is correlated
with Fractional Anisotropy maps and conventional T1W, T2W and FLAIR images.
Repeated measurements show a standard deviation of 1-2% in myelin volume for
the whole brain.