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Axon Diameter Measurements using Diffusion MRI are Infeasible

View ORCID ProfileMichael Paquette, View ORCID ProfileCornelius Eichner, Thomas R. Knösche, View ORCID ProfileAlfred Anwander
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.01.320507
Michael Paquette
1Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
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  • For correspondence: paquette@cbs.mpg.de
Cornelius Eichner
1Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
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Thomas R. Knösche
1Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
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Alfred Anwander
1Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
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Abstract

The feasibility of non-invasive axonal diameter quantification with diffusion MRI is a strongly debated topic due to the neuroscientific potential of such information and its relevance for the axonal signal transmission speed. It has been shown that under ideal conditions, the minimal diameter producing detectable signal decay is bigger than most human axons in the brain, even using the strongest currently available MRI systems. We show that resolving the simplest situations including multiple diameters is unfeasible even with diameters much bigger than the diameter limit. Additionally, the recently proposed effective diameter resulting from fitting a single value over a distribution is almost exclusively influenced by the biggest axons. We show how impractical this metric is for comparing different distributions. Overall, axon diameters currently cannot be quantified by diffusion MRI in any relevant way.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license.
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Posted October 07, 2021.
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Axon Diameter Measurements using Diffusion MRI are Infeasible
Michael Paquette, Cornelius Eichner, Thomas R. Knösche, Alfred Anwander
bioRxiv 2020.10.01.320507; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.01.320507
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Axon Diameter Measurements using Diffusion MRI are Infeasible
Michael Paquette, Cornelius Eichner, Thomas R. Knösche, Alfred Anwander
bioRxiv 2020.10.01.320507; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.01.320507

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