Biexponential diffusion attenuation in various states of brain tissue: Implications for diffusion-weighted imaging

Thoralf Niendorf*, Rick M. Dijkhuizen, David G. Norris, Menno Van Lookeren Campagne, Klaas Nicolay

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

496 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

Diffusion-weighted single voxel experiments conducted at b-values up to 1 x 104 smm-2 yielded biexponential signal attenuation curves for both normal and ischemic brain. The relative fractions of the rapidly and slowly decaying components (f1, f2) are f1 = 0.80 ± 0.02, f2 = 0.17 ± 0.02 in healthy adult rat brain and f1 = 0.90 ± 0.02, f2 = 0.11 ± 0.01 in normal neonatal rat brain, whereas the corresponding values for the postmortem situation are f1 = 0.69 ± 0.02, f2 = 0.33 ± 0.02. It is demonstrated that the changes in f1 and f2 occur simultaneously to those in the extracellular and intracellular space fractions (f(ex), f(ln)) during: (i) cell swelling after total circulatory arrest, and (ii) the recovery from N-methyl-D- aspartate induced excitotoxic brain edema evoked by MK-801, as measured by changes in the electrical impedance. Possible reasons for the discrepancy between the estimated magnitude components and the physiological values are presented and evaluated. Implications of the biexponential signal attenuation curves for diffusion-weighted imaging experiments are discussed.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)847-857
Number of pages11
JournalMagnetic resonance in medicine
Volume36
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 1996
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • cytotoxic edema
  • NMR spectroscopy
  • rat brain
  • water diffusion

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