title: The design of anisotropic diffusion phantoms for the validation of diffusion weighted magnetic resonance imaging.
abstract: Diffusion weighted magnetic resonance imaging offers a non-invasive tool to explore the three-dimensional structure of brain white matter in clinical practice. Anisotropic diffusion hardware phantoms are useful for the quantitative validation of this technique. This study provides guidelines on how to manufacture anisotropic fibre phantoms in a reproducible way and which fibre material to choose to obtain a good quality of the diffusion weighted images. Several fibre materials are compared regarding their effect on the diffusion MR measurements of the water molecules inside the phantoms. The diffusion anisotropy influencing material properties are the fibre density and diameter, while the fibre surface relaxivity and magnetic susceptibility determine the signal-to-noise ratio. The effect on the T(2)-relaxation time of water in the phantoms has been modelled and the diffusion behaviour inside the fibre phantoms has been quantitatively evaluated using Monte Carlo random walk simulations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electronics and Information Systems, MEDISIP, Ghent University-IBBT-IBiTech, De Pintelaan 185 block B, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium. Els.Fieremans@ugent.be
authors.forename: Els
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Fieremans
authors.forename: Yves
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: De Deene
authors.forename: Steven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Delputte
authors.forename: Mahir S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Ozdemir
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Achten
authors.forename: Ignace
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Lemahieu