Many neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders feature low level neuroinflammation that is insidious yet difficult to diagnose in vivo. Here we explore the possibility of detecting acute neuroinflammation induced by systemic administration of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in rats using in vivo diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) at 9.4T. Subtle yet widespread decreases in fractional anisotropy and increases in mean diffusivity were found in LPS-treated rats. Our results confirm the notion that DTI metrics are potential sensitive biomarkers of the dynamic inflammatory response in the brain, raising the possibility of utilizing DTI as a non-invasive in vivo assay for therapeutic interventions.
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