1Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; 2Department
of Education and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education, University of
British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; 3Philips
Medical Systems; 4Department of Biomedical Engineering, University
of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Magnetic
resonance imaging provides a mean to non-invasively investigate the
neurological cause of dyslexia, a learning disability that affects ones
ability to read despite adequate intelligence. Myelin water imaging, based on calculating
the myelin water fraction from multi-echo T2 relaxation curves, can be used
to quantitatively assess white matter.
In this study, myelin water imaging and cognitive and reading
assessments were performed on children with a wide range of reading ability
in order to investigate the relationship between dyslexia and white matter
development in the brain.