A novel tensor distribution model for the diffusion-weighted MR signal.

ABSTRACT: Diffusion MRI is a non-invasive imaging technique that allows the measurement of water molecule diffusion through tissue in vivo. The directional features of water diffusion allow one to infer the connectivity patterns prevalent in tissue and possibly track changes in this connectivity over time for various clinical applications. In this paper, we present a novel statistical model for diffusion-weighted MR signal attenuation which postulates that the water molecule diffusion can be characterized by a continuous mixture of diffusion tensors. An interesting observation is that this continuous mixture and the MR signal attenuation are related through the Laplace transform of a probability distribution over symmetric positive definite matrices. We then show that when the mixing distribution is

SUBMITTER: Jian B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2576290 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature