Mini review on anomalous diffusion by MRI: Potential advantages, pitfalls, limitations, nomenclature, and correct interpretation of literature

Capuani, Silvia and Palombo, Marco ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4892-7967 2020. Mini review on anomalous diffusion by MRI: Potential advantages, pitfalls, limitations, nomenclature, and correct interpretation of literature. Frontiers in Physics 7 , 248. 10.3389/fphy.2019.00248

PDF - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (716kB)

Abstract

In this mini-review, we addressed the transient-anomalous diffusion by MRI, starting from the assumption that transient-anomalous diffusion is ubiquitously observed in biological tissues, as demonstrated by different single-particle-tracking optical experiments. The purpose of this review is to identify the main pitfalls that can be encountered when venturing into the field of anomalous diffusion quantified by diffusion-MRI methods. Therefore, the theory of anomalous diffusion deriving from its mathematical definition was reported and connected with the consolidated description and the established procedures of conventional diffusion-MRI of tissues. We highlighted the two different modalities for quantifying subdiffusion and superdiffusion parameters of anomalous diffusion. Then we showed that most of the papers concerning anomalous diffusion, actually deal with pseudo-superdiffusion due to the use of a superdiffusion signal representation. Pseudo-superdiffusion depends on water diffusion multi-compartmentalization and local magnetic in-homogeneities that mimic the superdiffusion of spins. In addition to the relatively large production of pseudosuperdiffusion images, anomalous diffusion research is still in its early stages due to the limited flexibility of conventional clinical MRI scanners that currently prevent the acquisition of diffusion-weighted images by varying the diffusion time (the necessary acquisition modality to quantify transient-subdiffusion in human tissues). Moreover, the wide diffusion gradient pulses complicates the definition of a reliable function representative of anomalous diffusion signal behavior to fit data. Nevertheless, it is important and possible to address these limitations, as one of the potentialities of anomalous diffusion imaging is to increase the resolution, sensitivity, and specificity of MRI.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Psychology
Additional Information:	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) and the copyright owner(s) 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.
Publisher:	Frontiers Media
ISSN:	2296-424X
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	3 March 2022
Date of Acceptance:	23 December 2019
Last Modified:	15 May 2023 19:18
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/147898

Citation Data

Cited 8 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item