Characterizing Brain Development in the Ferret In Vivo using Diffusion Tensor Imaging

Yulin V. Chang¹, Philip V. Bayly¹

We investigated the relationships between cortical folding, T₂, average ADC, and diffusion anisotropy in a developing ferret brain using diffusion tensor imaging. Our results show that brain folding is accompanied by the vanishing of the diffusion anisotropy in the gray matter. We observed that the white matter has not been fully myelinated by the last time point (P30) of measurement, which suggests that cortical folding and white matter myelination are independent processes during brain development.