Abstract #1625

Kiselev V, Novikov D

Water diffusion in tissues is hindered by complex cellular structure. This justifies using diffusion measurements as a structural probe. But just how sensitive such a probe can be? Addressing this question is important since acquiring the signal over a voxel is equivalent to performing statistical averaging of the tissue properties over a macroscopic scale. This may strongly reduce the information content of the ADC. By characterizing the local tissue diffusivity in terms of its correlation functions, here we present generic arguments why in fact the ADC remains sensitive to the microscopic details of the structural organization of the medium.