Novel multisection design of anisotropic diffusion phantoms

Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging provides access to fiber pathways and structural integrity in fibrous tissues such as white matter in the brain. In order to enable better access to the sensitivity of the diffusion indices to the underlying microstructure, it is important to develop artificial model systems that exhibit a well-known structure, on the one hand, but benefit from a reduced complexity on the other hand. In this work, we developed a novel multisection diffusion phantom made of polyethylene fibers tightly wound on an acrylic support. The phantom exhibits three regions with different geometrical configuration of fibers: a region with fibers crossing at right angles, a region with parallel fibers and homogeneous density, and, finally, a region with parallel fibers but with a gradient of fiber density along the axis of symmetry. This gives rise to a gradual change of the degree of anisotropy within the same phantom. In this way, the need to construct several phantoms with different fiber densities is avoided, and one can access different fractional anisotropies in the same experiment under the same physical conditions. The properties of the developed phantom are demonstrated by means of diffusion tensor imaging and diffusion kurtosis imaging. The measurements were performed using a diffusion-weighted spin-echo and a diffusion-weighted stimulated-echo pulse sequence programmed in-house. The influence of the fiber density packing on the diffusion parameters was analyzed. We also demonstrate how the novel phantom can be used for the validation of high angular resolution diffusion imaging data analysis.