Abstract #0724

Validation and application of soma and neurite density imaging (SANDI) for in-vivo human brainstem nuclei atlasing

Marta Bianciardi¹, Maria G. García-Gomar¹, Kavita Singh¹, Michele Guerreri², Alejandra Sierra³, Jussi Tohka³, Ali Abdollahzadeh³, Hui Zhang², and Marco Palombo²

¹Department of Radiology, A.A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, MGH and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States, ²Centre for Medical Image Computing, Department of Computer Science, University College London, London, United Kingdom, ³A.I. Virtanen Institute for Molecular Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland

Despite the development of detailed in-vivo human cortical atlases, in-vivo brainstem nuclei atlasing is still at its early stages due to reduced gray-white matter MRI-contrast in the brainstem compared to the cortex. Recently, we generated an in-vivo probabilistic atlas of 16 human brainstem nuclei based on multi-contrast 7Tesla MRI. Nevertheless, to further expand the in-vivo brainstem nuclei atlas, there is an unmet need from additional MRI-contrast reflecting brainstem cytoarchitecture. We found that recently developed in-vivo Soma-And-Neurite-Density-Imaging (SANDI) provides original MRI-contrast directly related to ex-vivo brainstem nuclei cytoarchitecture, and can be used to expand the current in-vivo human brainstem nuclei atlas.

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