Artificial Phantoms for Studies of Anisotropic Diffusion in the Brain

Diffusion Weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging (DW-MRI) provides access to fibre pathways and structural integrity in fibrous tissues such as white matter in the brain. Many advanced techniques have been recently suggested for the reconstruction of the diffusion orientation density function via high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) methods. In order to determine the sensitivity of the proposed diffusion approach to the underlying microstructure it is important to develop artificial model systems that, on the one hand, exhibit the required structure and diffusion properties, but, on the other hand, benefit from a reduced complexity. The aim of this project is to design and construct diffusion fibre phantoms that mimic the brain white matter microstructure and are suitable for the validation of analytical models and numerical simulation.

Diffusion phantoms can be used in many applications:

1. validation of theoretical models and approaches
2. development and testing of new pulse sequences
3. validation of numerical simulations
4. validation of post-processing schemes
5. optimization of measurement protocols.