Characterization of Fetal Brain Development with Diffusion Tensor Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Characterization of Fetal Brain Development with Diffusion Tensor Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Huang Hao

US Neurology, 2010;5(2):89-92

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Abstract
Human brain anatomy is characterized by dramatic structural changes during fetal development. It is extraordinarily complex and yet its origin is a simple tubular structure. Revealing detailed anatomy at different stages of human fetal brain development not only aids in understanding this highly ordered process, but also provides clues to detect abnormalities caused by genetic or environmental factors. For example, the characterization of white matter axon growth could provide important clues to understanding the inhomegeneity of white matter injuries in cerebral palsy. However, anatomical studies of human brain development during this period are surprisingly scarce, and histology-based atlases have only recently become available. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), a novel method of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), is capable of delineating anatomical components with high contrast and revealing structures at the microscopic level. The volumetric measurement from 3D DTI data can quantify structural growth. As discussed in this article, the fetal brain DTI database will be a valuable resource for human brain developmental study and will provide reference standards for diagnostic radiology of premature newborns.

Keywords
Brain development, cerebral palsy, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), fetal, newborn, atlas, tractography

Disclosure: The author has no conflicts of interest to declare.
Received: January 5, 2009 Accepted: August 27, 2009
Correspondence: Hao Huang, PhD, Assistant Professor, Advanced Imaging Research Center, Department of Radiology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, 2201 Inwood Road, Dallas, TX 75390-8542. E: hao.huang@utsouthwestern.edu

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is a new type of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that allows non-invasive mapping of the diffusion properties of brain water and reveals unique tissue property ‘diffusion anisotropy’.1–5 MRI can measure the extent of water diffusion along an arbitrary axis. From this measurement, it is often found that the water tends to diffuse along a preferential axis, which has been shown to coincide with the orientation of the ordered structures. Based on the diffusion orientation of water molecules, the DTI technique can provide several imaging contrasts such as anisotropy maps and orientation maps or a combination of the two, called a color-coded orientation map or simply colormap hereafter. In the colormap, the brightness shows the extent of the anisotropy and the color represents fiber orientation. It is known that the tensor-based data processing is only an approximation of the underlying tissue properties and more sophisticated and time-consuming data acquisition and processing schemes have been postulated.6–8 However, for developmental brains we believe that the tensor approximation is an available and accepted method to characterize the gross white matter architectures and microstructures. Scanning time is best used to enhance the image resolution rather than to perform the complicated data acquisition. The contrast from diffusion tensor MRI has been used to provide unique information about axonal tracts of human brain white matter.1,9–13

It is especially useful for delineating the anatomy of premature brain that is not myelinated, and for which relaxation-based contrast is inadequate.14–22 The technique can detect injuries in specific white matter tracts as well as demonstrate the rearrangement of tracts.23–27 As DTI becomes widely available in clinical scanners, it is likely that DTI will be an important diagnostic tool for premature infants in the future.

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Keywords:
Brain development, cerebral palsy, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), fetal, newborn, atlas, tractography, cerebral palsy causes, bells palsy, muscular dystrophy, mri diffusion tensor imaging, diffusion tensor imaging dti, diffusion tensor tractography, tractography mri, tractography brain,

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