Abstract #3160

New Invariant Indexes to Quantify Water Anomalous Diffusion in Brain

Silvia De Santis^1,2, Silvia Capuani^1,2, Andrea Gabrielli^3,4, Bruno Maraviglia,^1,5

¹Physics department, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy; ²INFM-CNR SOFT, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy; ³SMC - CNR/INFM, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy; ⁴ISC - CNR, Rome, Italy; ⁵Neuroimaging Laboratory, S. Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy

We propose a new procedure to detect the deviation from the mono-exponentiality of water diffusion in brain. The stretched-exponential model has been extended to three-dimensional space to obtain new scalar invariants. The potentiality of this methodology has been evaluated on young healthy subjects. Statistical analysis on selected ROIs from different cerebral tissues underlined a different contrast compared to conventional DTI one. In particular, GM and WM can be discriminated on the basis of their microstructural complexity, underlying a chance for investigating subtle changes of the water diffusive motion in tissues which are not detected by conventional MD and FA indexes.