Coregistered histology sections with diffusion tensor imaging data at 200 μm resolution in meningioma tumors

A significant problem in diffusion MRI (dMRI) is the lack of understanding regarding which microstructural features account for the variability in the diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) parameters observed in meningioma tumors. A common assumption is that mean diffusivity (MD) and fractional anisotropy (FA) from DTI are inversely proportional to cell density and proportional to tissue anisotropy, respectively. Although these associations have been established across a wide range of tumors, they have been challenged for interpreting within-tumor variations where several additional microstructural features have been suggested as contributing to MD and FA.To facilitate the investigation of the biological underpinnings of DTI parameters, we performed ex-vivo DTI at 200 & mu;m isotropic resolution on sixteen excised meningioma tumor samples. The samples exhibit a variety of microstructural fea-tures because the dataset includes meningiomas of six differ-ent meningioma types and two different grades. Diffusion -weighted signal (DWI) maps, DWI maps averaged over all directions for given b-value, signal intensities without diffu-sion encoding (S 0 ) as well as DTI parameters: MD, FA, in -plane FA (FAIP), axial diffusivity (AD) and radial diffusivity (RD), were coregistered to Hematoxylin & Eosin-(H & E) and Elastica van Gieson-stained (EVG) histological sections by a non-linear landmark-based approach. Here, we provide DWI signal and DTI maps coregistered to histology sections and describe the pipeline for processing the raw DTI data and the coregistration. The raw, processed, and coregistered data are hosted by Analytic Imaging Diag-nostics Arena (AIDA) data hub registry, and software tools for processing are provided via GitHub. We hope that data can be used in research and education concerning the link between the meningioma microstructure and parameters ob-tained by DTI.& COPY; 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc.This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Automated summary

A significant problem in diffusion MRI is the lack of understanding regarding which microstructural features account for the variability in the diffusion tensor imaging parameters observed in meningioma tumors. To investigate this, ex-vivo DTI was performed on meningioma tumor samples and the data was coregistered with histology sections. The raw, processed, and coregistered data are available for research and education purposes.