Non-Invasive Axon Diameter Mapping: So Fascinating, So Challenging & So Many Questions
Member-Initiated Symposium

ORGANIZERS: Muhamed Barakovic, Alessandro Daducci, Tim Dyrby

Monday, 18 June 2018

Session Number: MIS-03

Overview
Quantitative estimation of nerve fiber morphology, together with functional connectivity, has a key role in neuroscience and treatment of neurological disorders. In particular, noninvasive axon diameter mapping may lead to a better understanding of both normal brain development or obtain insight into the progression of neuronal diseases, as this estimation usually requires histology on ex vivo tissue samples.
Diffusion MRI (dMRI) is the only in vivo noninvasive technique for quantifying brain microstructure. Despite all the potential benefits, dMRI has so far gained very little interest from neurobiologists and neuroscientists due to the fact that the axon diameter is extremely challenging to estimate. 
The importance to recover this crucial microstructural feature goes in the direction of filling the gap between histological estimates and dMRI reconstructions. In particular, recent research showed the need of using complementary information in order to get to the next developmental stages, e.g. exploiting anatomical priors and multimodal data. For example, microstructural features could potentially have a huge impact in dMRI tractography opening new perspective for connectivity estimation.
Hence, we take the occasion of this symposium to discuss the latest cutting-edge research in the field, challenges, latest developments and future prospectives.
We propose a format with 5 talks by outstanding speakers of 20’ each (15’ talk + 5’ questions) followed by a 20’ discussion.

Target Audience
The symposium is expected to attract attendees with background in anatomy, psychology, neuroscience, physics, signal processing and mathematics.

Educational Objectives
As a result of attending this course, participants should be able to:
- Identify the basics of neuronal tissue and brain anatomy;
- Explain the link between axon diameter mapping and brain function; and
- Recognize the state of art, the current challenges and latest developments in diffusion MRI acquisition and modeling.