Apparent diffusion coefficient measured by diffusion MRI of moving and deforming domains.

The modeling of the diffusion MRI signal from moving and deforming organs such as the heart is challenging due to significant motion and deformation of the imaged medium during the signal acquisition. Recently, a mathematical formulation of the Bloch-Torrey equation, describing the complex transverse magnetization due to diffusion-encoding magnetic field gradients, was developed to account for the motion and deformation. In that work, the motivation was to cancel the effect of the motion and deformation in the MRI image and the space scale of interest spans multiple voxels. In the present work, we adapt the mathematical equation to study the diffusion MRI signal at the much smaller scale of biological cells. We start with the Bloch-Torrey equation defined on a cell that is moving and deforming and linearize the equation around the magnitude of the diffusion-encoding gradient. The result is a second order signal model in which the linear term gives the imaginary part of the diffusion MRI signal and the quadratic term gives the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) attributable to the biological cell. We numerically validate this model for a variety of motions and deformations.

Quantifying the effect of tissue deformation on diffusion-weighted MRI: a mathematical model and an efficient simulation framework applied to cardiac diffusion imaging.

Cardiac motion presents a major challenge in diffusion weighted MRI, often leading to large signal losses that necessitate repeated measurements. The diffusion process in the myocardium is difficult to investigate because of the unqualified sensitivity of diffusion measurements to cardiac motion. A rigorous mathematical formalism is introduced to quantify the effect of tissue motion in diffusion imaging. The presented mathematical model, based on the Bloch-Torrey equations, takes into account deformations according to the laws of continuum mechanics. Approximating this mathematical model by using finite elements method, numerical simulations can predict the sensitivity of the diffusion signal to cardiac motion. Different diffusion encoding schemes are considered and the diffusion weighted MR signals, computed numerically, are compared to available results in literature. Our numerical model can identify the existence of two time points in the cardiac cycle, at which the diffusion is unaffected by myocardial strain and cardiac motion. Of course, these time points depend on the type of diffusion encoding scheme. Our numerical results also show that the motion sensitivity of the diffusion sequence can be reduced by using either spin echo technique with acceleration motion compensation diffusion gradients or stimulated echo acquisition mode with unipolar and bipolar diffusion gradients.