Can Diffusion MRI Reveal Stroke-Induced Microstructural Changes in GM?

The development of noninvasive techniques to image the human brain has enabled the demonstration of structural plasticity in response to motor learning. In the last years evidence has emerged on the potential of some measures derived from diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging (DMRI) as numerical biomarkers of tissue changes in regions involved in the motor network. In these works, the descriptors were extensively analysed in contralateral white matter (WM) along both single connections and networks relying on tract-based analyses and statistical evaluation. Though, their ability to detect changes in gray matter (GM) has been scarcely investigated. This work aims at the assessment of propagator-based microstructural indices in capturing GM changes and the relation of such changes to functional recovery at six months from the injury focusing on the Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) and the three dimensional Simple Harmonics Oscillator based Reconstruction and Estimation (3D-SHORE) models.