Abstract #0681

DTI Based Muscle Fiber Tractography in Humans at 4 Tesla Using Stimulated-Echos

R Allen Waggoner¹, Toshiaki Oda², Ryuta Kinugasa^2,3, Kenichi Ueno⁴, Kang Cheng^1,4, Hideo Yokota², Ryutaro Himeno²

¹Laboratory for Cognitive Brain Mapping, RIKEN - Brain Science Institute, Wako-shi, Saitama-ken, Japan; ²Living Matter Simulation Research Team, RIKEN, Wako-shi, Saitama-ken, Japan; ³School of Sport Sciences, Waseda University, Tokorozawa, Saitama-ken, Japan; ⁴fMRI Support Unit, RIKEN - Brain Science Institute, Wako-shi, Saitama-ken, Japan

Due to the extremely short T2 of muscle, DTI studies of muscle have to date been limited to 3T and lower. The use of the Stimulated-Echo for studying diffusion in systems with short T2 and long T1, has a long history. With the application of two different Stimulated-Echo based pulse sequences, we were able to perform DTI based tractography of human calf muscle at 4 Tesla and resolve dense fiber tract bundles.