Quantitative Assessment of Microstructure Properties of Human Corpus Callosum using Parametric T1 and Myelin imaging

The corpus callosum (CC) facilitates the intense neural pathways connecting two cerebral hemispheres in mammals, and it contains numerous intra- and inter-hemispheric myelinated axonal projections. Imaging of callosal microstructures is of importance to understand its functional and anatomical connectivity to cortical areas. We hypothesized that the parametric T1 measure could be sensitive to the CC microstructure and its change associated with the fiber size; and it should be logically correlated to the CC myelin content mapped by T1/T2 ratio image. To test this hypothesis, we incorporated T1 mapping, myelin content mapping and collosal parcellation mapping for differentiating and correlating the fiber size and myelin content in the CC of healthy human at 7T. In comparison with histology report, our results indicate a positive correlation between the T1 value and CC fiber size, in contrast, it approximately correlates inversely to the CC myelin content. The overall results show the utility of complementary parametric T1 and myelin imaging approaches to quantitatively assess the fiber microstructure of human corpus callosum. This hybrid imaging approach could provide a robust and useful imaging tool for detection of fiber abnormality in the human white matter.

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