Meeting Banner
Abstract #1696

In the Pursuit of Intra-Voxel Fiber Orientations: Comparison of Compressed Sensing DTI and Q-Ball MRI

Bennett Allan Landman1,2, Hanlin Wan2,3, John A. Bogovic3, Peter C. M. van Zijl, 2,4, Pierre-Louis Bazin5, Jerry L. Prince, 2,3

1Electrical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States; 2Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States; 3Electrical and Computer Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States; 4F.M. Kirby Center, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD, United States; 5Radiology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States


Q-ball imaging offers the potential to resolve the DTI crossing-fiber problem by acquiring additional diffusion sensitized scans. Yet, practical constraints limit its widespread adaptation in clinical research. Recently, compressed sensing has characterized regions of crossing fibers using traditional DTI data (i.e., low b-value, 30 directions). Here, we compare q-ball and compressed sensing in simulated and in vivo crossing-fibers. Compressed sensing estimates intra-voxel structure with greater reliability than traditional q-ball while using only 13% of the scan time. Hence, compressed sensing has the potential to enable clinical study of intra-voxel structure for studies that have hitherto been limited to tensor analysis.