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Abstract #0134

MR hydrophysiology reveals multiple exchange pathways in neural tissue

Nathan Hu Williamson1,2, Rea Ravin2,3, Teddy Xuke Cai2, Julian Alejandro Rey2,4, and Peter Joel Basser2
1Military Traumatic Brain Injury Initiative, Henry M Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, Bethesda, MD, United States, 2Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, MD, United States, 3Celoptics, Rockville, MD, United States, 4National Institute for General Medical Sciences, Bethesda, MD, United States

Synopsis

Keywords: Microstructure, Diffusion Modeling, Advanced diffusion encoding

Motivation: Understand the sensitivity of diffusion MRI to microstructure and function of living neural tissue.

Goal(s): Determine dominant exchange pathways and whether they are active or passive.

Approach: Realtime MR hydrophysiology was used to study steady-state water exchange and diffusion in live ex vivo neural tissue.

Results: Water exchange is not active per se but is linked to tonicity maintained by active transport. Tonicity modulates the apparent exchange rate between fast transmembrane and slow intracellular pathways. The transmembrane pathway has a high activation energy and does not require ions, suggesting it is not through channels or cotransporters but is likely through lipid bilayers.

Impact: A multisite exchange mechanism involving passive transmembrane and geometric pathways can explain connections to activity. Most of the transmembrane water exchange occurs through lipid bilayers in gray matter. This knowledge should inform the development of novel quantitative MRI biomarkers.

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