Abstract #3533

In Vivo Fiber Tracking in the Rabbit Brain on a Clinical 3T MRI System

Daniel Gllmar¹, Stephan Lau^2,3, Lars Flemming⁴, Jens Haueisen³, Jrgen R. Reichenbach¹

¹Medical Physics Group, University Hospital Jena, Jena, Germany; ²Neuroengineering Group, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia; ³Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Informatics, TU Ilmenau, Ilmenau, Germany; ⁴Biomagnetic Center, University Hospital Jena, Jena, Germany

This study shows the feasibility of in vivo fiber tracking of the rabbit brain using DTI-MRI on a clinical whole-body 3T MRI system. Applying in-plane interpolation and overlapping interleaved slices resulted in a dataset with isotropic resolution of 0.6 mm. Seventy different diffusion weighted directions and six b0-images were scanned in less than 20 minutes. The applied deterministic tracking of the tensor data revealed well defined major tracts in good agreement with the anatomic structure.