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Fundamentals of diffusion MRI physics
Author(s) -
Kiselev Valerij G.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
nmr in biomedicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.278
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1099-1492
pISSN - 0952-3480
DOI - 10.1002/nbm.3602
Subject(s) - diffusion , diffusion mri , physics , nuclear magnetic resonance , statistical physics , nuclear physics , magnetic resonance imaging , medicine , radiology , thermodynamics
Diffusion MRI is commonly considered the “engine” for probing the cellular structure of living biological tissues. The difficulty of this task is threefold. First, in structurally heterogeneous media, diffusion is related to structure in quite a complicated way. The challenge of finding diffusion metrics for a given structure is equivalent to other problems in physics that have been known for over a century. Second, in most cases the MRI signal is related to diffusion in an indirect way dependent on the measurement technique used. Third, finding the cellular structure given the MRI signal is an ill‐posed inverse problem. This paper reviews well‐established knowledge that forms the basis for responding to the first two challenges. The inverse problem is briefly discussed and the reader is warned about a number of pitfalls on the way.