Free Water in White Matter Differentiates MCI and AD From Control Subjects

Authors

Matthieu Dumont
Maggie Roy
Pierre-Marc Jodoin
Felix C Morency
Jean-Christophe Houde
Zhiyong Xie
Cici Bauer
Tarek A Samad
Koene R A Van Dijk
James A Goodman
Maxime Descoteaux

Publication Date

1-1-2019

Journal

Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience

Abstract

Recent evidence shows that neuroinflammation plays a role in many neurological diseases including mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD), and that free water (FW) modeling from clinically acquired diffusion MRI (DTI-like acquisitions) can be sensitive to this phenomenon. This FW index measures the fraction of the diffusion signal explained by isotropically unconstrained water, as estimated from a bi-tensor model. In this study, we developed a simple but powerful whole-brain FW measure designed for easy translation to clinical settings and potential use as a priori outcome measure in clinical trials. These simple FW measures use a "safe" white matter (WM) mask without gray matter (GM)/CSF partial volume contamination (

Keywords

Alzheimer disease; diffusion MRI; diffusion tensor imaging; free water; mild cognitive impairment; neuroinflammation; white matter; white matter hyper intensity