Chun-Hung Yeh1,2, Irina Kezele1,
Daniel Alexander3, Benoit Schmitt1, Jing-Rebecca Li1,
Denis Le Bihan1, Ching-Po Lin2, Cyril Poupon1
1NeuroSpin, I2BM, CEA,
Gif-sur-Yvette, France; 2National Yang-Ming University, Taipei,
Taiwan; 3University College London, London, United Kingdom
We assessed the feasibility in mapping white matter fiber radius using diffusion MRI on clinical scanners. We performed Monte Carlo simulations on water diffusion in various fiber radii, and evaluated a list of conventional pulsed-gradient spin-echo imaging protocols with the constraints on the gradient system capability. Within a clinical acceptable acquisition time of 30 minutes, we observed that using three q-space sampling shells with moderate to high b-values is potentially feasible to accurately estimate fiber radii ranging from 2-6 um. Meanwhile we provided a guideline to setup clinical protocols for the purpose of fiber radius estimation.