Abstract #2729

Sutton B, Ciobanu L, Liang Z, Raguin L, Hernando D, Karampinos D, Georgiadis J

Standard diffusion-weighted MRI (DWMRI) involves the acquisition of images with q vectors on a sphere in q-space (single q value). One prevailing medical application is the study of brain white matter, for which several methods are available to extract quantitative information about the relative anisotropy of the parenchyma and the orientation of the myelinated fibers. We are proposing a quantitative analysis of q-space MRI data (QUAQ) by exploiting the physics of diffusion in fiber networks to extract the relevant parameters and resolve fiber-crossings. Experimental results on a capillary phantom show that fiber crossings can be resolved using a lesser amount of data than existing methods would require.