This study is the first attempt towards histological validation of three advanced diffusion MRI measures derived from the 3D diffusion propagator in white matter tissue: i) return-to-origin-probability (RTOP), ii) return-to-axis-probability (RTAP) and iii) mean squared displacement (MSD), using ex-vivo cat spinal cord tissue. We compared these dMRI measures voxel-wise with the underlying histological properties of the tissue. RTOP and RTAP were found to be significantly correlated with the following biological characteristics: i) Number of axons, ii) Myelin volume fraction and iii) Restricted water fraction, showing that the diffusion propagator imaging measures are sensitive to the underlying white matter microstructural properties.
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