Sinchai Tsao1, Darryl H. Hwang1,
Manbir Singh, 12
1Department of Biomedical Engineering,
The
microstructural integrity of the limbic regions is frequently compromised in
neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer Disease (AD). A key limbic
region is the fornix located proximal to the ventricles. Given the relatively
large voxel size used in most clinical DTI acquisitions, the probability of
CSF contamination in the fornix is high, often leading to interruption of
tracts due to either a reduction in FA or misdirection due to erroneous
eigenvector estimation, particularly in AD where ventricles are enlarged.
FLAIR DTI has been used by many investigators to suppress CSF (e.g.
[1,2,3,4]) but at the expense of SNR and data acquisition time and to our
knowledge, FLAIR DTI is rarely used in clinical studies. Aiming toward
eventual quantification of DTI metrics such as FA and tract density in the
fornix and other limbic pathways in AD, the objective of this work was to
develop a post-processing strategy to correct partial volume effects such
that it could be used to analyze existing clinical DTI data.
Keywords