Abstract #0887

Cerebral Maturation in the Early Preterm Period - A Magnetization Transfer and Diffusion Tensor Imaging Study Using Voxel-Based Analysis

Revital Nossin-Manor¹,², Dallas Card¹, Charles Raybaud¹,³, Margot J. Taylor¹,², John G. Sled⁴,⁵

¹Diagnostic Imaging, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada; ²Neurosciences & Mental Health, Research Institute, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada; ³Medical Imaging, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada; ⁴Physiology Experimental Medicine, Research Institute, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada; ⁵Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

Magnetization transfer and diffusion tensor imaging were used along with structural imaging and group-wise image registration to determine anatomical correspondence between individual scans and the pooled quantitative parametric data of the very preterm brain. Using voxel-based analysis, we were able to follow temporal and anatomical variations in cerebral maturation over the preterm brain providing non-invasive complementary evidence for the change in cell density at the subplate zone, the migration of radial glial cells at the anterior caps, the development of order in the axonal pathways and early myelination events occurring in the preterm period.