Diffusion kurtosis imaging discriminates patients with white matter lesions from healthy subjects

This work illustrates that DKI reveals white matter lesions and also discriminates healthy subjects from patients with white matter lesions. To show this capability, we have investigated DKI images of a healthy subject and a patient with white matter lesions. The analysis was performed both between and within subjects. Regions of Interest (ROIs) for lesion and normal white matter in the patient images are selected manually (for within subject study) and also the corresponding ROIs in the healthy subject are defined (for between subject study). The results of comparing the estimated values for apparent diffusion and kurtosis parameters show that both D(app) and K(app) can distinguish normal and abnormal tissues. K(app) (D(app)) of the normal regions is greater (lower) than that of the abnormal regions. Another investigation over all voxels in the brain shows an important feature of kurtosis in determining white matter lesions.