Technical Report | Published:

Quantifying the local tissue volume and composition in individual brains with magnetic resonance imaging

Nature Medicine 19, 1667–1672 (2013) | Download Citation

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Abstract

Here, we describe a quantitative neuroimaging method to estimate the macromolecular tissue volume (MTV), a fundamental measure of brain anatomy. By making measurements over a range of field strengths and scan parameters, we tested the key assumptions and the robustness of the method. The measurements confirm that a consistent quantitative estimate of MTV can be obtained across a range of scanners. MTV estimates are sufficiently precise to enable a comparison between data obtained from an individual subject with control population data. We describe two applications. First, we show that MTV estimates can be combined with T1 and diffusion measurements to augment our understanding of the tissue properties. Second, we show that MTV provides a sensitive measure of disease status in individual patients with multiple sclerosis. The MTV maps are obtained using short clinically appropriate scans that can reveal how tissue changes influence behavior and cognition.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge J. Barral, M. Gutman, H. Horiguchi, I. Levesque, A. Sherbondy and A. Takahashi for helpful advice and feedback. We thank S. Phipps, I. Levesque and A. Kerr for help in data analysis and acquisition. This work was supported by the US National Institutes of Health research grants RO1-EY15000 and NSF grant BCS-1228397. A.M. is the recipient of support from the Human Frontier Science Program and a Jewish Community Federation Program Machiah Foundation Fellowship. N.-J.C. is the recipient of support from the Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF-NRFF2011-01).

Author information

Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.

    • Aviv Mezer
    • , Jason D Yeatman
    • , Kendrick N Kay
    • , Michael L Perry
    •  & Brian A Wandell

  2. Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

    • Nikola Stikov

  3. Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.

    • Nam-Joon Cho

  4. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore.

    • Nam-Joon Cho

  5. Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.

    • Robert F Dougherty
    •  & Brian A Wandell

  6. Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.

    • Josef Parvizi
    •  & Le H Hua

  7. Department of Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.

    • Kim Butts-Pauly

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Contributions

A.M. and B.A.W. developed the method, wrote the manuscript and prepared the figures. J.D.Y., N.S., M.L.P., R.F.D., K.B.-P. and A.M. obtained the data. N.-J.C. provided the lipid phantoms. N.S., R.F.D., K.N.K. and A.M. developed analysis tools. J.P. and L.H.H. diagnosed the patient with multiple sclerosis and enabled those scans. A.M. and J.D.Y. developed the diffusion methods and applications. B.A.W. provided equipment and administered the experiment. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

Competing interests

Stanford University has filed a US patent application describing the technology used to measure PD, T1, MTV, VIP and SIR in this study (A.M., R.F.D. and B.A.W.).

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Aviv Mezer.

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DOI

https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.3390

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