title: Double-pulsed diffusional kurtosis imaging for the in vivo assessment of human brain microstructure.
abstract: We have recently extended conventional single-pulsed-field-gradient (s-PFG) diffusional kurtosis imaging (DKI) to double-pulsed-field-gradient (d-PFG) diffusion MRI sequences, with a method known as double-pulsed DKI (DP-DKI). By virtue of a six-dimensional (6D) formulation for q-space, many of the results and insights of s-PFG DKI are generalized to those of DP-DKI. Owing to the fact that DP-DKI isolates the second order contributions to the d-PFG signal (i.e. second order in b-value), the 6D diffusional kurtosis encodes information beyond what is available from s-PFG sequences. Previously, we have demonstrated DP-DKI for in vivo mouse brain at 7 T, and it is the objective of this study to demonstrate the feasibility of DP-DKI at 3 T for the in vivo assessment of human brain microstructure. In addition, an example is given of how to utilize the additional information obtained from DP-DKI for the purpose of biophysical modeling. The relationship between a specific microscopic anisotropy metric estimated from DP-DKI and other recently proposed measures is also discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, China. Electronic address: edward.s.hui@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Edward S
authors.initials: ES
authors.lastname: Hui
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA; Center for Biomedical Imaging, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA.
authors.forename: Jens H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Jensen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D016880:Anisotropy; D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D038524:Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D017352:Echo-Planar Imaging; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
keywords: Double-pulsed-field-gradient; Human; Kurtosis; Microscopic anisotropy; Multiple-wave-vector; Non-Gaussian diffusion