Oleg Posnansky*1, Yuliya Kupriyanova1,
N. Jon Shah1,2
1Medical Imaging Physics,
Institute of Neurosciences & Medicine - 4, Forschungszentrum Jlich GmbH,
52425 Jlich, Germany; 2Department of Neurology, Faculty of
Medicine, JARA, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
Proton self-diffusion demonstrates superb sensitivity to the biological properties of living tissue. A complex interplay between different compartments and structures poses different amounts of hindrance to diffusing spins. The presence of restricting cellular structures, and variation in the integrity of the underlying neural tissue lead to non-Gaussian dynamics of the signal. Retarding effects on axon membranes were included in renormalization-group method. Microparameters of diffusivity in neurons were investigated. It is shown that the presence of axon membranes leads to non-Gaussian diffusion. A physical model determining intracellular properties from diffusion-weighted imaging is described.