Brian Hansen1,
Jeremy J. Flint2,3, Choong Heon-Lee3,4, Michael Fey5,
Franck Vincent5, Michael A. King6, Peter
Vestergaard-Poulsen1, Stephen J. Blackband7
1Center for
Functionally Integrative Neuroscience (CFIN), Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark;
2Department of Neuroscience, University of Florida; 3McKnight
Brain Institute, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA; 4Department
of Electrical Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA; 5Bruker
Biospin; 6Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics,
University of Florida; 7Department of Neuroscience, Center for
Structural Biology & National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, University
of Florida
Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and tractography (DTT) are regularly used for investigating tissue structure and for delineating white matter tracts. Recently, we proposed a method for comparing DTT results to the histology of the actual tissue on which DTI experiments were performed. Here we present new results obtained using these methods on samples of the ventral horn in human spinal cord. Specifically, we extract the primary eigenvector from DTI measurements at microscopic resolution and compare this microstructural information to myelin-stained histology of the tissue samples employed. Our results confirm that the primary eigenvector reflects microstructure clearly. These results are relevant to techniques in which tissue structure is investigated using the primary eigenvector.