Abstract #4463

Diffusion MRI with tensor-valued diffusion encoding as a marker of axonal content within malformations of cortical development

Björn Lampinen¹, Ariadne Zampeli², Filip Szczepankiewicz^3,4, Kristina Källén⁵, Maria Compagno Strandberg², Isabella Björkman-Burtscher⁶, and Markus Nilsson³

¹Clinical Sciences Lund, Medical Radiation Physics, Lund University, Lund, Sweden, ²Clinical Sciences Lund, Neurology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden, ³Clinical Sciences Lund, Diagnostic Radiology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden, ⁴Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States, ⁵Clinical Sciences Lund, AKVH-Neurology Helsingborg, Lund University, Lund, Sweden, ⁶Radiology, Sahlgrenska university hospital, Gothenburg, Sweden

MRI is central to presurgical workup for malformations of cortical development (MCD) but findings are ambiguous on morphological imaging. For example, assessments on cortical thickness may disagree with histology. We investigated whether this gap may be bridged by diffusion MRI (dMRI) with the novel ‘tensor-valued diffusion encoding’ technique. Results from thirteen patients showed WM-like content with high microscopic anisotropy within lesions that were uniform and GM-like in T₁- and T₂-weighted images and on conventional dMRI. As a marker of axonal content less confounded by myelination and orientation dispersion, tensor-valued diffusion encoding may improve MCD characterization and evaluation of cortical thickness.

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