Preliminary evaluation of accelerated microscopic diffusional kurtosis imaging (μDKI) in a rodent model of epilepsy

Publication date: Available online 20 October 2018

Source: Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Author(s): Yang Ji, Dongshuang Lu, Limin Wu, Bensheng Qiu, Yi-Qiao Song, Phillip Zhe Sun

Abstract

Purpose

Our study aimed to develop accelerated microscopic diffusional kurtosis imaging (μDKI) and preliminarily evaluated it in a rodent model of chronic epilepsy.

Methods

We investigated two μDKI acceleration schemes of reduced sampling density and angular range in a phantom and wild-type rats, and further tested μDKI method in pilocarpine-induced epilepsy rats using a 4.7 Tesla MRI. Single slice average μD_app and μK_app maps were derived, and Nissl staining was obtained.

Results

The kurtosis maps from two accelerated μDKI sampling schemes (sampling density and range) are very similar to that using fully sampled data (SSIM > 0.95). For the epileptic models, μDKI showed noticeably different contrast from those obtained with conventional DKI. Specifically, the average μK_app was significantly less than that of the average of K_app (0.15 ± 0.01 vs. 0.47 ± 0.02) in the ventricle.

Conclusions

Our study demonstrated the feasibility of accelerated in vivo μDKI. Our work revealed that μDKI provides complementary information to conventional DKI method, suggesting that advanced DKI sequences are promising to elucidate tissue microstructure in neurological diseases.

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