Millimeter Analytical Q-Ball Fiber Density Function for a Better Separation of Fiber Populations at 7T

Cyril Poupon^1,2, Christopher J. Wiggins^1,2, Maxime Descoteaux^1,2, Thorsten Feiweier³, Jean-Franois Mangin^1,2, Denis Le Bihan^1,2

The purpose of this work was to demonstrate the feasibility of diffusion-weighted imaging at ultra-high field (7T) with a true millimeter resolution within a reasonable acquisition time. We also demonstrate the possibility of using b-values for performing high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) such as Q-ball imaging. The results show that high resolution structural organization of the fibers can be revealed with such millimeter data that could not be easily extracted from standard 2mm isotropic data at lower 1.5T or 3.0T fields