The impact of human brain geometry on the transport of an intrathecal tracer
摘要
Intrathecal contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), utilizing the contrast agent gadobutrol as cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) tracer is emerging as a useful method to study glymphatic function in the human brain. A consistent finding with this technique is large inter-individual variability regarding tracer propagation. In this study, we outline an approach which predicts the distribution of tracer in the parenchyma based only on geometric information from brain tissue as captured by MRI, addressing one possible explanation for this variability.
MethodsRegistrations are computed from pre-injection MRI, and used to map images at
Tracer enrichment mapped between patients by image registration correlate strongly with actual observed enrichment. For patients in the reference group, the relative root mean squared error on our predictions is on average
We show that predictions made from purely geometrical considerations correlate strongly with actual MRI tracer enrichment for patients with similar diagnoses, thus quantifying the role of geometry in tracer enrichment.