Exploiting gradient-echo frequency evolution: Probing white matter microstructure and extracting bulk susceptibility-induced frequency for quantitative susceptibility mapping

This work is to investigate the microstructure-induced frequency shift in white matter (WM) with crossing fibers and to separate the microstructure-related frequency shift from the bulk susceptibility-induced frequency shift by model fitting the gradient-echo (GRE) frequency evolution for potentiall...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Magnetic resonance in medicine 2024-04, Vol.91 (4), p.1676-1693
Main Authors: Chen, Lin, Shin, Hyeong-Geol, van Zijl, Peter C M, Li, Xu
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cylinder heads
Evolution
Fibers
Frequency shift
In vivo methods and tests
Mapping
Mathematical models
Microstructure
Parameters
Populations
Reconstruction
Simulation
Substantia alba
Susceptibility
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Summary:This work is to investigate the microstructure-induced frequency shift in white matter (WM) with crossing fibers and to separate the microstructure-related frequency shift from the bulk susceptibility-induced frequency shift by model fitting the gradient-echo (GRE) frequency evolution for potentially more accurate quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM). A hollow-cylinder fiber model (HCFM) with two fiber populations was developed to investigate GRE frequency evolutions in WM voxels with microstructural orientation dispersion. The simulated and experimentally measured TE-dependent local frequency shift was then fitted to a simplified frequency evolution model to obtain a microstructure-related frequency difference parameter ( ) and a TE-independent bulk susceptibility-induced frequency shift ( ). The obtained was then used for QSM reconstruction. Reconstruction performances were evaluated using a numerical head phantom and in vivo data and then compared to other multi-echo combination methods. GRE frequency evolutions and -based tissue parameters in both parallel and crossing fibers determined from our simulations were comparable to those observed in vivo. The TE-dependent frequency fitting method outperformed other multi-echo combination methods in estimating in simulations. The fitted , , and QSM could be improved further by navigator-based B fluctuation correction. A HCFM with two fiber populations can be used to characterize microstructure-induced frequency shifts in WM regions with crossing fibers. HCFM-based TE-dependent frequency fitting provides tissue contrast related to microstructure ( ) and in addition may help improve the quantification accuracy of and the corresponding QSM.
ISSN:0740-3194
1522-2594
DOI:10.1002/mrm.29958