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METHODS article
Front. Neuroinform.
Volume 18 - 2024 |
doi: 10.3389/fninf.2024.1354708
Exploring white matter dynamics and morphology through interactive numerical phantoms: The White Matter Generator
Provisionally accepted- 1 Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
- 2 Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance, Copenhagen University Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark
Brain white matter is a dynamic environment that continuously adapts and reorganizes in response to stimuli and pathological changes. Glial cells, especially, play a key role in tissue repair, inflammation modulation, and neural recovery. The movements of glial cells and changes in their concentrations can influence the surrounding axon morphology. We introduce the White Matter Generator (WMG) tool to enable the study of how axon morphology is influenced through such dynamical processes, and how this, in turn, influences the diffusion-weighted MRI signal. This is made possible by allowing interactive changes to the configuration of the phantom generation throughout the optimisation process. The phantoms can consist of myelinated axons, unmyelinated axons, and cell clusters, separated by extra-cellular space. Due to morphological flexibility and computational advantages during the optimisation, the tool uses ellipsoids as building blocks for all structures; chains of ellipsoids for axons, and individual ellipsoids for cell clusters. After optimisation, the ellipsoid representation can be converted to a mesh representation which can be employed in Monte-Carlo diffusion simulations. This offers an effective method for evaluating tissue microstructure models for diffusion-weighted MRI in controlled bio-mimicking white matter environments. Hence, the WMG offers valuable insights into white matter's adaptive nature and implications for diffusion-weighted MRI microstructure models, and thereby holds the potential to advance clinical diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation strategies for various neurological disorders and injuries.
Keywords: diffusion MRI (dMRI), White matter (WM), Numerical phantom, Monte Carlo simulations, microstructure imaging, interactive, dynamic
Received: 12 Dec 2023; Accepted: 25 Jun 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 Winther, Peulicke, Andersson, Kjer, Bærentzen and Dyrby. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Sidsel Winther, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
Oscar Peulicke, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
Hans Martin Kjer, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
Jakob Andreas Bærentzen, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
Tim Bjørn Dyrby, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
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