Way Cherng Chen1, Karla Miller1
1Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain (FMRIB), University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
A phantom made of densely-packed fibers has been constructed to study the relationship of T2* and GRE phase maps to the orientation to B0. By minimizing the contribution of bulk magnetic susceptibility effects, signal changes can be more definitively attributed to the microstructural properties of the phantom. We observe a similar trend in the fiber phantom to that previously reported in white matter fibre tracts supporting the idea that phase and T2* variation in white matter fibers is related to magnetic susceptibility shifts associated with axonal micro-geometry.