DTI of Brain Development

Introduction Understanding early human brain development is of great clinical importance, as many neurological and neurobehavioral disorders have their origin in early structural and functional brain development. With conventional magnetic resonance imaging we have been able to delineate macroscopically early developmental events such as myelination and gyral development. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is a relatively new MR modality that assesses water diffusion in biological tissues at a microstructural level (1). The developing human brain presents several challenges for the application of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Values for the water apparent diffusion coefficient and diffusion anisotropy differ markedly between pediatric brain and adult brain and vary with age. As a result, much of the knowledge regarding DTI derived from studies of mature, adult human brain is not directly applicable to developing brain. Yet in these challenges also lies opportunity, as changes in water apparent diffusion coefficient and diffusion anisotropy during development provide unique insight into the structural basis of brain maturation.