The gradient echo and spin echo signal in brain tissue depend both on diffusion and susceptibility effects around and from capillaries, i.e. on structural and functional information that arise from the microvascular networks. In this work, the dependence of the relaxation rates R2 and R2* on capillary radius are considered for a random arrangement of capillaries in the strong collision approximation, and a closed-form solution is derived. Radius maps are then constructed for glioblastoma mice (N=8) to reveal an increased vessel radius in tumorous tissue as compared to non-affected brain tissue.
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