Framework for Internal Gradient Distribution Tensors to characterize tissue microstructure with MRI

LEONARDO PEDRAZA; GONZALO A. ALVAREZ

Proc. Intl. Soc. Mag. Reson. Med.

INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR MAGNETIC RESONANCE IN MEDICINE

Año: 2023 vol. 31 p. 5251 - 5251

1545-4428

Typically MRI resolution is limited to millimeters in clinical scanners, but other sources of information, derived from diffusion processes of water in biological tissues, allow us to get information at micrometric scales. Here we consider extracting morphological information by probing the internal magnetic gradients induced by the heterogeneous magnetic susceptibility of tissues. From the cumulant expansion of the magnetization signal we derive an internal gradient distribution tensor (IGDT) expansion and propose modulating gradient spin-echo sequences to probe them. These IGDTs contains microstructural information of tissues. Our results provide a framework to describe IGDTs to exploit them as quantitative diagnostic tools.