Abstract #4034

Combined T1- And DTI Weighted Contrast for High Resolution Human Brain Mapping Using 3D MPRAGE

marzieh Nezamzadeh^1,2, Gerald B. Matson,²³, Yu Zhang^1,2, Michael W. Weiner^1,2, Norbert Schuff^1,2

¹radiology, University of California San Francisco, san francisco, CA, United States; ²Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Diseases, CIND, VA medical center, San Francisco, san francisco, CA, United States; ³Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of California San Francisco, san francisco, CA, United States

Previously, magnetization-prepared rapid gradient-echo (MPRAGE) has been combined with diffusion encoding to achieve diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). However, an incorporation of DTI contrast in 3D-MPRAGE has not been shown before on human brain data. Furthermore, a combination of T1 and DTI weighted contrast should benefit assessment of gray/white matter boundaries, which has important implications for accurately imaging brain atrophy. The overall goal of this study was to develop multiple contrast high resolution MRI. Specifically, we show the incorporation of DTI contrast, e.g. fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD), into T1-weighted 3D-MPRAGE using simulations and experimental results from human brain at 4T.