Abstract #2061

Revealing the three-dimensional intraparenchymal trajectory of the brainstem cranial nerve systems by diffusion MRI representation.

Elizabeth B Hutchinson^1,2, Neda Sadeghi¹, Martin Lizak³, Martha Quezado⁴, Irini Manoli⁵, and Carlo Pierpaoli¹

¹QMI/NIBIB, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States, ²Henry M. Jackson Foundation, Bethesda, MD, United States, ³NINDS, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States, ⁴NCI, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States, ⁵NHGRI, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States

The cranial nerve systems of the human brainstem are challenging to distinguish from their complex architectural surroundings, but anisotropy, orientation and tract-based diffusion MRI methods may address these challenges and enable mapping intraparenchymal trajectories of the cranial nerves. The objective of this study was to apply and evaluate DTI and tractography tools for segmentation and mapping of the cranial nerve systems at high spatial resolution in post-mortem human brainstems. Our findings demonstrate the salient features of scalar, directional and tract-based maps for distinguishing the cranial nerves and their nuclei with attention to their relative geometric complexity and architectural environment.

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