Yumei Yan1, Govind Nair2, Longchuan Li2, Mark Wilson3, Xiaoping Hu2, Mar Sanchez4, 5, Xiaodong Zhang1, 6
1Yerkes Imaging Center, Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States; 2Department of Biomedical Engineering, Emory University and Georgia institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, United States; 3Division of Neuropharmacology and Neurologic Diseases, Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States; 4Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, School of Medicine, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States; 5Psychobiology Division, Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States; 6Division of Neuropharmacology and Neurologic Diseases, Yerkes National Primate Research Center, , Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States
Optic nerve plays a critical role in the visual pathway and is nearly unmyelinated at birth. In this study, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) was employed to characterize the optic nerve development in rhesus monkeys from infant (2 weeks old) to adulthood (6 years old). The progression of fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD), axial and radial diffusivity followed an exponential trend, consistent with the white matter development in human brains. Also, the time to maturity of the diffusion parameters is comparable with the previous reports on postmortem examination of rhesus monkey optic nerves.