Quantitative Tissue Structure Characterization with Temporal Diffusion Spectroscopy

Junzhong Xu¹, Mark D. Does¹, Ke Li¹, Daniel F. Gochberg¹, John C. Gore¹

In the present work, we provide analytical expressions for MR signals with OGSE methods for restricted diffusion based on the theory of temporal diffusion spectroscopy. A novel model is developed to interpret DWI data obtained from OGSE measurements to quantitatively characterize tissue structures. Compared with other models with conventional PGSE methods, this model has the ability to quantitatively extract tissue structural information including cell nuclear sizes which are usually not obtainable using conventional methods. This approach provides new structural parameters which may be helpful to follow intracellular changes in tissues and potentially can be used for applications such as monitoring tumor response to treatment in vivo.