NMR in biomedicine
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In conventional diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), water diffusion distribution is described as a 2nd-order three-dimensional (3D) diffusivity tensor. It assumes that diffusion occurs in a free and unrestricted environment with a Gaussian distribution of diffusion displacement, and consequently that diffusion weighted (DW) signal decays with diffusion factor (b-value) monoexponentially. In biological tissue, complex cellular microstructures make water diffusion a highly hindered or restricted process. ⋯ Several recent rodent DKI studies from our group are summarized, and DKI and DTI compared for their efficacy in detecting neural tissue alterations. They demonstrate that DKI offers a more comprehensive approach than DTI in describing the complex water diffusion process in vivo. By estimating both diffusivity and kurtosis, it may provide improved sensitivity and specificity in MR diffusion characterization of neural tissues.