The Human Connectome Project and beyond: Initial applications of 300mT/m gradients

The engineering of a 3T human MRI scanner equipped with 300mT/m gradients – the strongest gradients ever built for an in vivo human MRI scanner – was a major component of the NIH Blueprint Human Connectome Project (HCP). This effort was motivated by the HCP's goal of mapping, as completely as p...

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Published in:NeuroImage (Orlando, Fla.) Vol. 80; pp. 234 - 245
Main Authors: McNab, Jennifer A., Edlow, Brian L., Witzel, Thomas, Huang, Susie Y., Bhat, Himanshu, Heberlein, Keith, Feiweier, Thorsten, Liu, Kecheng, Keil, Boris, Cohen-Adad, Julien, Tisdall, M. Dylan, Folkerth, Rebecca D., Kinney, Hannah C., Wald, Lawrence L.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Amsterdam Elsevier Inc 15.10.2013
Elsevier Limited
Subjects:
Axon diameter
Brain damage
Consciousness
Consortia
Corpus callosum
Diffusion MRI
Fourier transforms
Human connectome
In vivo
Medical imaging
Military personnel
Neural networks
Neurosciences
NMR
Nuclear magnetic resonance
Postmortem
Scanners
Studies
Tractography
Traumatic coma
In vivo
Human connectome
Consciousness
Tractography
Traumatic coma
Postmortem
Diffusion MRI
Axon diameter
Corpus callosum
ISSN:1053-8119, 1095-9572
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Summary:The engineering of a 3T human MRI scanner equipped with 300mT/m gradients – the strongest gradients ever built for an in vivo human MRI scanner – was a major component of the NIH Blueprint Human Connectome Project (HCP). This effort was motivated by the HCP's goal of mapping, as completely as possible, the macroscopic structural connections of the in vivo healthy, adult human brain using diffusion tractography. Yet, the 300mT/m gradient system is well suited to many additional types of diffusion measurements. Here, we present three initial applications of the 300mT/m gradients that fall outside the immediate scope of the HCP. These include: 1) diffusion tractography to study the anatomy of consciousness and the mechanisms of brain recovery following traumatic coma; 2) q-space measurements of axon diameter distributions in the in vivo human brain and 3) postmortem diffusion tractography as an adjunct to standard histopathological analysis. We show that the improved sensitivity and diffusion-resolution provided by the gradients are rapidly enabling human applications of techniques that were previously possible only for in vitro and animal models on small-bore scanners, thereby creating novel opportunities to map the microstructure of the human brain in health and disease. •Diffusion spectrum imaging to study traumatic coma recovery•In vivo human axon diameter measurements using 300mT/m gradients•High-resolution (0.6mm isotropic) diffusion imaging in whole, fixed human brain
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ISSN:1053-8119
1095-9572
DOI:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.05.074