Abstract #0298

Tensor-valued Diffusion MRI Shows Elevated Microscopic Anisotropy and Tissue Heterogeneity in White and Grey Matter of Acute Ischemic Stroke

Mi Zhou¹, Robert Stobbe¹, Filip Szczepankiewicz^2,3, Mar Lloret⁴, Brian Buck⁴, Paige Fairall⁴, Ken Butcher⁴, Ashfaq Shuaib⁴, Derek Emery⁵, Markus Nilsson², Carl-Fredrik Westin³, and Christian Beaulieu¹

¹Biomedical Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada, ²Clinical Sciences Lund, Lund University, Lund, Sweden, ³Radiology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States, ⁴Neurology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada, ⁵Radiology and Diagnostic Imaging, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

Novel diffusion encoding modalities, such as tensor-valued encoding, can disentangle the effects of intra-voxel orientation dispersion and diffusion anisotropy, thereby resolving the fiber density from tissue heterogeneity. A rapid 2.5-minute protocol for tensor-valued diffusion MRI was applied for the first time to acute stroke. Microscopic anisotropy (µFA and MK_A) and tissue heterogeneity (MK_I) were higher in lesions of white and grey matter, in contrast to reduced DTI-derived fractional anisotropy at the voxel level. Elevated microscopic anisotropy in acute stroke may reflect increased trapped water in swollen axons, a measure independent of tract orientation dispersion.

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