Wenshu Qian1, Zhongping Zhang1,
Ed Xuekui Wu2, Matthew M. Cheung2, Queenie Chan1,3,
Pek-Lan Khong1, Mina Kim1
1Diagnostic Radiology, the
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China, People's Republic of; 2Electrical
& Electronic Engineering, the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China,
People's Republic of; 3Philips Healthcare, Hong Kong, China,
People's Republic of
Diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) was recently proposed to probe non-Gaussian diffusion property. The recent study demonstrated that various kurtosis estimates can reveal information different from diffusivity estimates by diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). However, it has never been reported whether directional kurtosis analysis in addition to DTI estimates improves tissue characterization in various human brain tissues. We aimed to characterize human neural tissues using kurtosis estimates and to compare them with conventional diffusivity estimates. Our results demonstrate that kurtosis estimates may help to better characterize neural tissues and detect their microstructural alterations complementary to the conventional diffusivity estimates.