Double diffusion encoding and applications for biomedical imaging

Abstract

Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging (dMRI) is one of the most important contemporary non-invasive modalities for probing tissue structure at the microscopic scale. The majority of dMRI techniques employ standard single diffusion encoding (SDE) measurements, covering different sequence parameter ranges depending on the complexity of the method. Although many signal representations and biophysical models have been proposed for SDE data, they are intrinsically limited by a lack of specificity. Advanced dMRI methods have been proposed to provide additional microstructural information beyond what can be inferred from SDE. These enhanced contrasts can play important roles in characterizing biological tissues, for instance upon diseases (e.g. neurodegenerative, cancer, stroke), aging, learning, and development. In this review we focus on double diffusion encoding (DDE), which stands out among other advanced acquisitions for its versatility, ability to probe more specific diffusion correlations, and feasibility for preclinical and clinical applications. Various DDE methodologies have been employed to probe compartment sizes (Section 3), decouple the effects of microscopic diffusion anisotropy from orientation dispersion (Section 4), probe displacement correlations, study exchange, or suppress fast diffusing compartments (Section 6). DDE measurements can also be used to improve the robustness of biophysical models (Section 5) and study intra-cellular diffusion via magnetic resonance spectroscopy of metabolites (Section 7). This review discusses all these topics as well as important practical aspects related to the implementation and contrast in preclinical and clinical settings (Section 9) and aims to provide the readers a guide for deciding on the right DDE acquisition for their specific application.

References in corpus (14)

• Rotationally-invariant mapping of scalar and orientational metrics of neuronal microstructure with diffusion MRI
• Geometrical structure of Laplacian eigenfunctions
• Diffusion time dependence of microstructural parameters in fixed spinal cord
• Microscopic anisotropy misestimation in spherical-mean single diffusion encoding MRI
• Correlation Tensor Magnetic Resonance Imaging
• Insights into brain microstructure from in vivo DW-MRS
• Effects of nongaussian diffusion on "isotropic diffusion measurements'': an ex-vivo microimaging and simulation study
• Double Diffusion Encoding Prevents Degeneracy in Parameter Estimation of Biophysical Models in Diffusion MRI
• Accurate estimation of microscopic diffusion anisotropy and its time dependence in the mouse brain
• Layer-specific connectivity revealed by diffusion-weighted functional MRI in the rat thalamocortical pathway
• ConFiG: Contextual Fibre Growth to generate realistic axonal packing for diffusion MRI simulation
• NMR signal for particles diffusing under potentials: From path integrals and numerical methods to a new model of diffusion anisotropy
• Validation and noise robustness assessment of microscopic anisotropy estimation with clinically feasible double diffusion encoding MRI
• Orientationally-averaged diffusion-attenuated magnetic resonance signal for locally-anisotropic diffusion

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Evidence for microscopic kurtosis in neural tissue revealed by Correlation Tensor MRI
• Cellular EXchange Imaging (CEXI): Evaluation of a diffusion model including water exchange in cells using numerical phantoms of permeable spheres
• A Technical Primer on the Physical Modeling of Diffusion-Encoded Magnetic Resonance Experiments: A Random Process Perspective
• Beyond directions: Symmetry-aware rotation sets for triaxial diffusion encoding by geometric filter optimization