Ground truth hardware phantoms for validation of diffusion-weighted MRI applications
✍ Scribed by Pim Pullens; Alard Roebroeck; Rainer Goebel
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2010
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 389 KB
- Volume
- 32
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1053-1807
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Abstract
Purpose:
To quantitatively validate diffusion‐weighted MRI (DW‐MRI) applications, a hardware phantom containing crossing fibers at a sub‐voxel level is presented. It is suitable for validation of a large spectrum of DW‐MRI applications from acquisition to fiber tracking, which is an important recurrent issue in the field.
Materials and Methods:
Phantom properties were optimized to resemble properties of human white matter in terms of anisotropy, fractional anisotropy, and T~2~. Sub‐voxel crossings were constructed at angles of 30, 50, and 65 degrees, by wrapping polyester fibers, with a diameter close to axon diameter, into heat shrink tubes. We show our phantoms are suitable for the acquisition of DW‐MRI data using a clinical protocol.
Results:
The phantoms can be used to succesfully estimate both the diffusion tensor and non‐Gaussian diffusion models, and perform streamline fiber tracking. DOT (Diffusion Orientation Transform) and q‐ball reconstruction of the diffusion profiles acquired at b = 3000 s/mm^2^ and 132 diffusion directions reveal multimodal diffusion profiles in voxels containing crossing yarn strands.
Conclusion:
The highly purpose adaptable phantoms provide a DW‐MRI validation platform: applications include optimisation of acquisition schemes, validation of non‐Gaussian diffusion models, comparison and validation of fiber tracking algorithms, and quality control in multi‐center DWI studies. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2010;32:482–488. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.