RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article T1 Accurate free‐water estimation in white matter from fast diffusion MRI acquisitions using the spherical means technique A1 Tristán Vega, Antonio A1 París l Bandrés, Guillem Lluis A1 Luis García, Rodrigo de A1 Aja Fernández, Santiago K1 Diffusion MRI K1 Free water K1 Spherical means K1 White matter K1 22 Física AB To accurately estimate the partial volume fraction of free water in the white matter from diffusion MRI acquisitions not demanding strong sensitizing gradients and/or large collections of different b-values. Data sets considered comprise~32- 64 gradients near b =1000 s/mm2 plus~6 gradients near b =500 s/mm2.Theory and Methods: The spherical means of each diffusion MRI set with the same b- value are computed. These means are related to the inherent diffusion parameters within the voxel (free- and cellular- water fractions; cellular- water diffusivity), which are solved by constrained nonlinear least squares regression.Results: The proposed method outperforms those based on mixtures of two Gaussians for the kind of data sets considered. W.r.t. the accuracy, the former does not introduce significant biases in the scenarios of interest, while the latter can reach a bias of 5%– 7% if fiber crossings are present. W.r.t. the precision, a variance near 10%, compared to 15%, can be attained for usual configurations.Conclusion: It is possible to compute reliable estimates of the free- water fraction inside the white matter by complementing typical DTI acquisitions with few gradients at a lowb- value. It can be done voxel- by- voxel, without imposing spatial regularity constraints. PB Wiley SN 0740-3194 YR 2021 FD 2021 LK https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/49001 UL https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/49001 LA eng NO Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, 2021, vol 00, p.1-8 NO Producción Científica DS UVaDOC RD 29-mar-2024