Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-1-2019
Journal
PLoS ONE
Volume
14
Issue
4
URL with Digital Object Identifier
10.1371/journal.pone.0215974
Abstract
© 2019 McCunn et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Purpose Neurite Orientation Dispersion and Density Imaging (NODDI) is a diffusion MRI (dMRI) technique used to characterize tissue microstructure by compartmental modelling of neural water fractions. Intra-neurite, extra-neurite, and cerebral spinal fluid volume fractions are measured. The purpose of this study was to determine the reproducibility of NODDI in the rat brain at 9.4 Tesla. Methods Eight data sets were successfully acquired on adult male Sprague Dawley rats. Each rat was scanned twice on a 9.4T Agilent MRI with a 7 ± 1 day separation between scans. A multi-shell diffusion protocol was implemented consisting of 108 total directions varied over two shells (b-values of 1000 s/mm2 and 2000 s/mm2). Three techniques were used to analyze the NODDI scalar maps: mean region of interest (ROI) analysis, whole brain voxel-wise analysis, and targeted ROI analyses (voxel-wise within a given ROI). The coefficient of variation (CV) was used to assess the reproducibility of NODDI and provide insight into necessary sample sizes and minimum detectable effect size. Results CV maps for orientation dispersion index (ODI) and neurite density index (NDI) showed high reproducibility both between and within subjects. Furthermore, it was found that small biological changes ( 50) for biological changes to be detected. Conclusions The ODI and NDI measured by NODDI in the rat brain at 9.4T are highly reproducible and may be sensitive to subtle changes in tissue microstructure.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Citation of this paper:
McCunn P, Gilbert KM, Zeman P, Li AX, Strong MJ, et al. (2019) Reproducibility of Neurite Orientation Dispersion and Density Imaging (NODDI) in rats at 9.4 Tesla. PLOS ONE 14(4): e0215974. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0215974
