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Abstract #0298

Tensor-valued Diffusion MRI Shows Elevated Microscopic Anisotropy and Tissue Heterogeneity in White and Grey Matter of Acute Ischemic Stroke

Mi Zhou1, Robert Stobbe1, Filip Szczepankiewicz2,3, Mar Lloret4, Brian Buck4, Paige Fairall4, Ken Butcher4, Ashfaq Shuaib4, Derek Emery5, Markus Nilsson2, Carl-Fredrik Westin3, and Christian Beaulieu1
1Biomedical Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada, 2Clinical Sciences Lund, Lund University, Lund, Sweden, 3Radiology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States, 4Neurology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada, 5Radiology and Diagnostic Imaging, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

Novel diffusion encoding modalities, such as tensor-valued encoding, can disentangle the effects of intra-voxel orientation dispersion and diffusion anisotropy, thereby resolving the fiber density from tissue heterogeneity. A rapid 2.5-minute protocol for tensor-valued diffusion MRI was applied for the first time to acute stroke. Microscopic anisotropy (µFA and MKA) and tissue heterogeneity (MKI) were higher in lesions of white and grey matter, in contrast to reduced DTI-derived fractional anisotropy at the voxel level. Elevated microscopic anisotropy in acute stroke may reflect increased trapped water in swollen axons, a measure independent of tract orientation dispersion.

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