Fast and reliable quantitative measures of white matter development with magnetic resonance fingerprinting

作者：Maya Yablonski, Zihan Zhou, Xiaozhi Cao, Sophie Schauman, Congyu Liao, Kawin Setsompop, Jason D. Yeatman · 发表于：Imaging Neuroscience · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1162/imag_a_00470 · 被引用次数：4 · 研究领域：Advanced Neuroimaging Techniques and Applications、Advanced MRI Techniques and Applications、Fetal and Pediatric Neurological Disorders

Developmental cognitive neuroscience aims to shed light on evolving relationshipsbetween brain structure and cognitive development. To this end, quantitativemethods that reliably measure individual differences in brain tissue propertiesare fundamental. Standard qualitative MRI sequences are influenced by scanparameters and hardware-related biases, and also lack physical units, making theanalysis of individual differences problematic. In contrast, quantitative MRIcan measure physical properties of the tissue but with the cost of long scandurations and sensitivity to motion. This poses a critical limitation forstudying young children. Here, we examine the reliability of an efficientquantitative multiparameter mapping method-magnetic resonancefingerprinting (MRF)-in children scanned longitudinally. We focus on T1values in white matter, since quantitative T1 values are known to primarilyreflect myelin content, a key factor in brain development. Forty-nine childrenaged 8-13 years (mean 10.3 years ± 1.4) completed 2 scanningsessions 2-4 months apart. In each session, two 2-min 3D-MRF scans at 1mm isotropic resolution were collected to evaluate the effect of scan durationon image quality and scan-rescan reliability. A separate calibration scanwas used to measure B0 inhomogeneity and correct for bias. We examined theimpact of scan time and B0 inhomogeneity correction on scan-rescanreliability of values in white matter, by comparing single 2-min and combinedtwo 2-min scans, with and w...