Abstract #2425

MR Elastography Reveals the Local Properties of White Matter Structures

Curtis L. Johnson¹,², Matthew D.J. McGarry³, John B. Weaver³,⁴, Keith D. Paulsen³,⁴, Huan Wang,²⁵, William C. Olivero,²⁵, Bradley P. Sutton,²⁶, John G. Georgiadis¹,²

¹Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, United States; ²Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, United States; ³Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, United States; ⁴Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH, United States; ⁵Surgery, University of Illinois Medical School, Urbana, IL, United States; ⁶Bioengineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, United States

Multishot MRE sequences for the brain allow for the acquisition of high-resolution displacement data, which can be used to create shear modulus maps with spatial variations consistent with white matter architecture. Through atlas-based segmentation, the mechanical properties of the corpus callosum and corona radiata are quantified. Healthy subjects are used to show that these structures are distinct from each other and from the total white matter. The reliability of these local measures is demonstrated through multiple scans of a single subject. This work shows that localized differences in brain mechanical properties may be investigated using high-resolution MRE.