MRI Characterization of non-Gaussian water diffusion in the brain using Diffusion Kurtosis Imaging (DKI)

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is the most commonly used technique to extract microstructural features from a set of diffusion-weighted images. In addition to the metrics obtained with DTI, diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) can provide non-Gaussian diffusion measures by means of the kurtosis tensor. DKI give an dimensionless measure that quantifies the deviation of the water diffusion displacement profile from the Gaussian distribution of unrestricted diffusion, providing a measure of the degree of diffusion hindrance or restriction. DKI has shown to be more sensitive to tissue microstructural changes in both normal and pathological neural tissue. The aim of this work is the description of the theory of DKI, the MRI protocol that we used for DKI acquisitions at 1.5T clinical scanner.