Gabrielle Fournet1,2, Luisa Ciobanu1, Jing Rebecca Li2, Alex Cerjanic3, Brad Sutton3, and Denis Le Bihan1
1CEA Saclay/Neurospin, Gif-sur-Yvette, France, 2INRIA Saclay, Palaiseau, France, 3Beckman Institute of Advanced Science and Technology, Urbana, IL, United States
IntraVoxel
Incoherent Motion (IVIM) imaging allows to extract perfusion parameters from a
series of diffusion weighted images. We show that the standard mono-exponential
model used to describe the IVIM signal can be improved by switching to a
bi-exponential model. Multiple diffusion time rat brain images were acquired at
7T and compared to numerical simulations of blood flow through the
microvascular network. Our results demonstrate that the bi-exponential model better
describes the data especially at short diffusion times and suggest that the
IVIM signal comprises the contributions from two different vascular pools: small
vessels (capillaries) and medium sized-vessels.
