Abstract #4432

Decreased axon water fraction can result from either axonal loss and/or demyelination, reflecting different ex-vivo and in-vivo conditions

Zihan Zhou¹, Qiqi Tong¹, Qiuping Ding¹, Junye Yao¹, Hongjian He¹, and Jianhui Zhong^1,2

¹Center for Brain Imaging Science and Technology, Key Laboratory for Biomedical Engineering of Ministry of Education, College of Biomedical Engineering and Instrumental Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, ²School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Rochester Medical Center, New York, NY, United States

White Matter Tract Integrity (WMTI) is specific to tissue microstructure. However, answers to a question of what a decreased axon water fraction (AWF), a metric of WMTI, reflects seem contradictory among previous in-vivo and ex-vivo studies. To our knowledge, there have been no studies that compare the difference in AWF decline under both ex-vivo and in-vivo conditions. Here we use Monte Carlo (MC) simulation to investigate such question and results show that AWF decline indicated demyelination under ex-vivo conditions while it also related to axonal loss in-vivo besides demyelination. Results highlighted the non-negligible effect of membrane permeability on the difference.

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