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Abstract #2125

Imaging the Grid Structure of the Brain with DSI and QBI with the 3T Connectom Instrument: Conditional Validation of in vivo MRI Tractography in Humans

Van J. Wedeen1, Ruopeng Wang1, Timothy G. Reese1, Thomas Witzel1, Julian Cohen-Adad2, Bruce R. Rosen1, Lawrence L. Wald1

1Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Mass General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, United States; 2Department of Electrical Engineering, Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

It has been recently shown that the fiber pathways of the brain follow a natural curvilinear coordinate system, and being vanishingly improbable, this finding is conditionally self-validating. To test these results in human subjects, we obtained Q-ball and diffusion spectrum MRI and with a simple automated procedure mapped their grid structure. Grid structure was observed widely in the brain regions with all diffusion methods, though different methods emphasized different structures. This study indicates that grid structure is readily obtained in humans, and offers a promising strategy for tractography validation and the mapping of brain structure.

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Keywords

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