The ability of tracking peripheral nerves in foot could be of great benefit for a number of investigations, which include traumas, diabetes and infections. Previous approaches to nerve tracking have employed diffusion tensor imaging (DTI, [1, 2]), which is a well established method of fiber tracking in the central nervous system. In the peripheral nervous system (PNS), however, one limitation of DTI is the low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) due to short T2 of water protons in nerve [3-5]. Furthermore, in imaging of foot nerves, the low SNR is exacerbated by the need of the high spatial-resolution required to visualize the nerves. Here, we propose a novel approach to nerve visualization, which exploits the difference in magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) between muscle and foot nerves.
Olaf Blanke, Mohamed Bouri, Oliver Alan Kannape, Atena Fadaeijouybari, Selim Jean Habiby Alaoui