Abstract #0723

Lu H, Jensen J, Hu C, Falangola M, Ramani A, Ferris S, Helpern J

Recently we developed a diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) technique that can measure conventional diffusion tensor as well as the non-Gaussian behavior of water diffusion in the tissue. Here DKI is applied to four patient groups: Alzheimers Disease patients, Mild cognitive impairment patients, age-matched controls, and young adult controls. Mean diffusivity (MD), fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean kurtosis (MK) parametric maps were computed. ROI analysis shows that the FA and MK increase while MD decreases among the four groups. Histograms reveal that MK have multiple peaks corresponding to different tissue types and is capable of differentiating volume atrophy from microstructual alterations.