National Skeletal Muscle Research Center

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is a non-invasive method by which MRI detects the subtle motions of water within complex tissues from which can be reconstructed both the local characteristics of water movement in a region and the form of the biological structures within which this diffusion is occurring. Shown above is principle directions of water diffusion (colored vectors) and the reconstructed fibers through the corpus callosum (colored tubes) overlayed on a slice from a high resolution anatomical scan (grayscale). The colors represents the preference for the water to move in specific directions (anisotropy) rather than diffusing homogeneously.