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• Technical Article •
Investigating the effect of aging on the microstructure of brain with novel diffusion imaging techniques
SHAO Han-yu 

DOI:10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2016.03.011.


[Abstract] Understanding brain alterations taking place at the cell level during aging is of great importance for revealing the underlying reasons of the cognitive decline in older individuals. Diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) provides a unique non-invasive probe into the microstructure of biological tissue in vivo. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is now the most widely used dMRI technique in clinic. However, due to its some inherent limitations, it fails to fully characterize the microstructural properties of the brain tissues. Specifically, (1) DTI assumes a single diffusion process following a Gaussian distribution within each voxel, this assumption is b-value dependent and prohibits DTI from characterization of the actual non-Gaussian diffusion in brain tissues caused by obstacles such as cell membranes and organelles. (2) Diffusion parameters derived from DTI are sensitive, but non-specific to underlying structural changes. (3) DTI-based fiber tractography cannot resolve fiber crossings. (4) DTI is less applicable to investigate the microstructural changes in gray matter. Several more advanced techniques of diffusion are now available that may serve as effective tools to complement DTI. In this review, I introduced three such techniques: diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI), composite hindered and restricted model of diffusion (CHARMED) and neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging (NODDI). DKI is an extension of DTI that provides a sensitive measure of tissue structure for both white and gray matter by quantifying the degree to which water diffusion is non-Gaussian. Results from several studies show that DKI provides important complementary indices of brain microstructure for the study of brain aging. CHARMED is a biophysical compartment model for white matter. It separates the signal from extra- and intra-axonal compartments in each voxel. The characterization of the intra-axonal part provides microstructural indices that are potentially more specific than those from DTI. CHARMED has not been widely applied in aging research because of its long acquisition time. However, a protocol that provides whole brain dataset in only 12 minutes has recently been developed, which might greatly boost its application in aging studies. NODDI is a unified compartment model for gray and white matter microstructure. It provides neurite density as well as orientation dispersion estimation. Available studies show NODDI is useful in disentangling factors contributing to the decrease in frontal fractional anisotropy and it can reveal age-related effects on gray matter in vivo with patterns aligning very closely with published postmortem data. Combined information from DTI and these new techniques would enable deeper understanding of how the microstructure of brain tissues changes with aging.
[Keywords] Brain；Aging；Diffusion tensor imaging；Diffusion kurtosis imaging；Composite hindered and restricted model of diffusion；Neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging

SHAO Han-yu Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China

Conflicts of interest   None.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS  This research was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China No. 81123002
Received  2015-11-14
Accepted  2016-02-15
DOI: 10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2016.03.011
DOI:10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2016.03.011.

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