Abstract #0422

B0-Orientation Dependence Can Characterize Cortical & Sub-Cortical Fibers in vivo at 7T

Julien Cohen-Adad¹, Jonathan R. Polimeni¹, Bruce R. Rosen¹, Caterina Mainero¹, Lawrence L. Wald¹,²

¹A. A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, United States; ²Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, MIT, Cambridge, MA, United States

Recent studies have shown a dependency between T2* and orientation of white matter fibers with respect to the orientation of the main magnetic field B0. Here we demonstrate from in vivo T2* mapping at 7T data that B0-orientation dependence can probe the coherency and orientation of cortical fibers, shedding light into the potential use of this type of contrast to characterize cyto-/myeloarchitecture in vivo. The B0-orientation dependence of sub-cortical fibers revealed consistent anatomical features, reflecting U-fibers running tangentially to the sulci and penetrating radially in both contiguous gyri.