Anthony Joseph Romano1, Michael Scheel2,
Sebastian Hirsch3, Juergen Braun4, Ingolf Sack3
1Physical Acoustics, Naval
Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, United States; 2Department of
Radiology, Charite Universitatsmedizin, Berlin, Germany; 3Department
of Radiology, Charite-Universitatsmedizin, Berlin, Germany; 4Institute
of Medical Informatics, Charite-Universitatsmedizin, Berlin, Germany
We apply Waveguide Constrained MR Elastography to evaluate the anisotropic properties of white matter tracts in the human brain. Diffusion Tensor Imaging is used to evaluate the pathways of the Cortico Spinal Tracts, and MR Elastography is implemented to measure the dynamic displacements within the same brain. A spatial-spectral filter is applied to the data which provides only those waves which are traveling along the white matter tracts as if they act as zero-order waveguides. A sliding window spatial Fourier transform is applied to this data to provide dispersion analysis and yield local anisotropic shear stiffness values of the tracts.
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