Brain Atlas-Based Study of the Interplay between Normal Tissue Microstructural MRI Parameters

Indika S. Walimuni¹, Khader M. Hasan¹

A comprehensive investigation of the interplay between microstructural MRI parameters such as T2 relaxation and diffusivites using standardized volume-based methods in both healthy gray and white matter has not been attempted before. Advances in multimodal MRI registration and segmentation methods have enabled the fusion of high resolution T1, diffusion tensor imaging and relaxation maps to a common native space provided by a high resolution T1-weighted volume. This volume can be anatomically labeled using atlases of white and gray matter regionn. In this work, we investigated the interplay between T2 relaxation and the radial diffusivity using 82 brain white matter (WM), gray matter (GM), cortical and subcortical structures. We report, a strong relation between the T2 relaxation and the radial diffusivity in a healthy population.