The importance of myelin water exchange in relaxation and diffusion metrics extracted from tissues is still an open question. In particular, to what extent myelin water fraction (MWF) values derived from multiexponential T2 are due to exchange between myelin and intra/extra axonal spaces remains unclear. Here, fixed rat spinal cords were subject to temperature-dependent multiple spin echo experiments, aiming to probe how exchange modulates quantitative T2 maps in rat spinal cords. We find signatures for exchange from T2 shift patterns, which are tightly linked to the axon diameters in the spinal cord.
This abstract and the presentation materials are available to members only; a login is required.