TY - JOUR
T1 - Determination of axonal and dendritic orientation distributions within the developing cerebral cortex by diffusion tensor imaging
AU - Jespersen, Sune Nrhøj
AU - Leigland, Lindsey A.
AU - Cornea, Anda
AU - Kroenke, Christopher D.
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received April 30, 2011; revised July 02, 2011; accepted July 07, 2011. Date of publication July 14, 2011; date of current version December 30, 2011. The work of S. N. Jespersen was supported in part by The Danish National Research Foundation (CFIN), in part by the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovations University Investment Grant (MINDLab), in part by the Hede Nielsens fund, and in part by the Kornings fund. The work of C. D. Kroenke was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health under Grant R01NS070022 and Grant P51RR000163, and in part by a grant from the Foundation for Alcohol Research. The work of L. A. Leigland was supported by T32AA007468. High-field MRI instrumentation used in this work was purchased with support from the W. M. Keck Foundation. Asterisk indicates corresponding author.
PY - 2012/1
Y1 - 2012/1
N2 - As neurons of the developing brain form functional circuits, they undergo morphological differentiation. In immature cerebral cortex, radially-oriented cellular processes of undifferentiated neurons impede water diffusion parallel, but not perpendicular, to the pial surface, as measured via diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging, and give rise to water diffusion anisotropy. As the cerebral cortex matures, the loss of water diffusion anisotropy accompanies cellular morphological differentiation. A quantitative relationship is proposed here to relate water diffusion anisotropy measurements directly to characteristics of neuronal morphology. This expression incorporates the effects of local diffusion anisotropy within cellular processes, as well as the effects of anisotropy in the orientations of cellular processes. To obtain experimental support for the proposed relationship, tissue from 13 and 31 day-old ferrets was stained using the rapid Golgi technique, and the 3-D orientation distribution of neuronal proceses was characterized using confocal microscopic examination of reflected visible light images. Coregistration of the MRI and Golgi data enables a quantitative evaluation of the proposed theory, and excellent agreement with the theoretical results, as well as agreement with previously published values for locally-induced water diffusion anisotropy and volume fraction of the neuropil, is observed.
AB - As neurons of the developing brain form functional circuits, they undergo morphological differentiation. In immature cerebral cortex, radially-oriented cellular processes of undifferentiated neurons impede water diffusion parallel, but not perpendicular, to the pial surface, as measured via diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging, and give rise to water diffusion anisotropy. As the cerebral cortex matures, the loss of water diffusion anisotropy accompanies cellular morphological differentiation. A quantitative relationship is proposed here to relate water diffusion anisotropy measurements directly to characteristics of neuronal morphology. This expression incorporates the effects of local diffusion anisotropy within cellular processes, as well as the effects of anisotropy in the orientations of cellular processes. To obtain experimental support for the proposed relationship, tissue from 13 and 31 day-old ferrets was stained using the rapid Golgi technique, and the 3-D orientation distribution of neuronal proceses was characterized using confocal microscopic examination of reflected visible light images. Coregistration of the MRI and Golgi data enables a quantitative evaluation of the proposed theory, and excellent agreement with the theoretical results, as well as agreement with previously published values for locally-induced water diffusion anisotropy and volume fraction of the neuropil, is observed.
KW - Brain modeling
KW - diffusion tensor imaging (DTI)
KW - inverse problems
KW - optical microscopy
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U2 - 10.1109/TMI.2011.2162099
DO - 10.1109/TMI.2011.2162099
M3 - Article
C2 - 21768045
AN - SCOPUS:84855393290
SN - 0278-0062
VL - 31
SP - 16
EP - 32
JO - IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging
JF - IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging
IS - 1
M1 - 5954184
ER -