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Abstract #0621

In Vivo Human Spinal Cord Diffusion Tensor Imaging Using Rician Noise Filter

Dhanashree Vernekar1, Wenshu Qian2, Zhongping Zhang3, Pek-Lan Khong3, Mina Kim3

1Department of Diagnostic Radiology , The University of Hong Kong , Hong Kong, China; 2Department of Diagnostic Radiology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong , China; 3Department of Diagnostic Radiology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China


Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has been used to successfully show changes in white matter structure and connectivity in spinal cord of patients with various diseases. However, spinal cord DTI is still in its infancy due to technical challenges including intrinsically low signal-to-noise ratio. Here we propose to use a nonlocal means Rician noise filter to enhance the accuracy of tensor estimation and obtain robust DTI-derived measures. Our results show that Rician denoising can significantly decrease erroneous tensor estiamtions with reduced mean Chi-square up to 43% over without Rician denoising.