Jeff Kershaw1,2,
Christoph Leuze3, Takayuki Obata1, Iwao Kanno1,
Ichio Aoki1
1Molecular
Imaging Centre, National Institute of Radiological Sciences, Chiba, Japan; 2School
of Bioscience & Biotechnology, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama,
Japan; 3Department of Neurophysics, Max Planck Institute for Human
Cognitive & Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
A sequence with oscillating motion-probing gradients was applied to investigate the restricted or hindered motion of water in in vivo rat brain tissue by observing changes to the apparent diffusion tensor, fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) as the effective diffusion-time is decreased. Imaging was performed in a sagittal slice through the rat cerebellum and corpus callosum, which contain most of the white matter in the rat brain. Paired-t tests found significant differences in the FA of the corpus callosum and cerebellar white matter after the effective diffusion-time was decreased from 7.5 ms to 3.75 ms. Significant differences were also found for the MD in both grey and white matter. It is anticipated that normal and pathological in vivo tissue structure can be probed with this technique.
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