Minimum detectable change in water diffusion using 3-T magnetic resonance imaging

The objective of this study was to determine the minimum change in fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD), and transverse diffusivity (TD) that can be detected in a repeated diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) session with 95% confidence, i.e., the minimum detectable change (MDC). During each of three sessions, six DTI sets were collected from eight volunteers using a 3-T MR scanner, and maps of FA, MD, and TD were generated. Mean FA, MD, and TD were recorded for regions of interest placed within the corpus callosum, corticospinal tract, putamen, optic radiation, and ventricular cerebral spinal fluid. An analysis of variance was performed to calculate MDC. MDC decreased as data were averaged over scans. With three averages, MDC was lowest within the corticospinal tract and putamen, where MDC was 0.04 for FA, below 30 × 10− 6 and 40 × 10− 6 mm2/s, respectively, for MD, and below 40 × 10− 6 mm2/s for TD. No improvement was observed beyond three averages. Our results suggest that DTI can be used clinically in individual patients to detect changes in FA, MD, and TD over repeated sessions associated with neurological disease with 95% confidence, or in research to investigate changes in white matter connections in individual subjects that accompany behavioral change, such as learning.