Full member of GSISH

Contact Details

IMETUM - Zentralinstitut für Medizintechnik
TU München
Boltzmannstraße 11
85748 Garching
Germany

Phone: +49 (0)89.289.10958
Fax:     +49 (0)89.289.10805

E-Mail: tim.sprenger@tum.de

Project Details

Project:
Advanced diffusion MR Methods to study human brain

Supervisors:
Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Univ. Axel Haase
Dr. Marion I. Menzel

Start of PhD-work at GSISH:
February 2012

Project Description:
Diffusion weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DWI) is a non-invasive imaging method that allows for estimating the molecular self-diffusion of water molecules within the surrounding biological tissue. With the rigorous formulation of the diffusion tensor, the three dimensional process reflecting tissue anisotropy could be adequately described. One major advantage of DTI-based measures is their enormous sensitivity for detecting alterations of the microscopic tissue composition, although DTI typically samples only a very small subset of the full diffusion information encoded in q-space.

In this project a technique called Diffusion Spectrum Imaging (DSI) is used to obtain the full q-space information. Based on DSI data, more advanced diffusion metrics like Kurtosis are derived. To reduce the acquisition time of the DSI data, a recently proposed combination of Compressed Sensing (CS) with DSI will be evaluated. Therefore a clinical study in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry will be realized. One major issue to be examined is the sensitivity of Kurtosis to characterize the progress of the disease Multiples Sclerosis (MS). Furthermore the DSI data is used for a more robust fiber tracking based on the Orientation Distribution Function (ODF).

A second field of research of this project will be alternative acquisition techniques for DSI data which don’t have the typical disadvantages of single shot Echo Planar Imaging (EPI) like low SNR and strong image artifacts.

Publications/Conference Papers:

Sprenger T, Herrmann K-H, Jochimsen T, Reichenbach JR
Vergleich einer TSE-Sequenz mit konventioneller Fettsättigung und einer Multiecho-GRASE-Sequenz mit VARPRO-Fett-Wasser-Trennung
Röfo - Fortschritte auf dem Gebiet der Röntgenstrahlen und der bildgebenden Verfahren, vol. 92, 2011

Sprenger T, Reichenbach JR, Herrmann K-H
Wasser-, Fett- Silikonseparation mit einer 5-echo TSE-Sequenz
Proceedings of the German Chapter of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, vol. 14, 2011

Sprenger T, Reichenbach JR, Herrmann K-H
Water/fat/silicone separation using a 5-echo TSE sequence and VARPRO-algorithm
Annual Meeting of the European Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine and Biology, vol. 28, 2011

Herrmann K-H, Sprenger T, Kaiser WA, Reichenbach JR
In-vivo water and fat and silicone separation using a fast multi-echo TSE acquisition
Proceedings of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, vol. 20, 2012

Krämer M, Sprenger T, Herrmann K-H, Reichenbach JR
Reliable fitting of phase data without unwrapping by wrapping the fit model
Proceedings of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, vol. 20, 2012

Sprenger T, Fernandez B, Bach M, Sperl J I, Golkov V, Tan E T, Marinelli L, King K F, Hardy C J, Zhu Q, Czisch M, Sämann P, Haase A, Menzel M I
Evaluation of DSI imaging with compressed sensing under the presence of different noise levels on a diffusion phantom
Annual Meeting of the European Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine and Biology, vol. 29, 2012

Menzel M I, Sperl J I, Tan E T, Sprenger T, Khare K, King K F, Tao X, Hardy C J, Marinelli L
Accelerated diffusion spectrum imaging in the human brain using compressed sensing
Proceedings of the tenth International Bologna Conference on Magnetic Resonance in Porous Media (MRPM10), 2012

Personal Details:

For Curriculum Vitae of Tim Sprenger please click here.