Free water (FW) imaging is a diffusion-weighted MRI technique that differentiates extracellular from intracellular water compartments. Increased FW fraction is generally associated with neuroinflammation. However, establishment of a direct link between FW and biomarkers of neuroinflammation in human studies is not feasible. In this work, we use MRSI to find correlations between FW and metabolic biomarkers of inflammation in HIV infected individuals. Our results show that FW had the most significant positive correlations with myo-inositol, a strong biomarker of gliosis and inflammation. This corroborates previous findings that elevated FW can be interpreted as a sign of inflammation in the brain.
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