Anisotropic MR elastography with a DTI-informed crossing fiber mechanical model

Anisotropic MRE has shown some promise in estimating mechanical properties of fiber-reinforced biological tissues. However, these methods are restricted to modeling a single fiber and ignores complexity that occurs such as regions of brain white matter with crossing fibers. Here we implement an inversion algorithm capable of modeling material with two fiber directions obtained from diffusion MRI in order to reduce model data mismatch and provide fiber-specific properties, which may show promise in correlating with brain health and function. Performance of this algorithm is demonstrated in simulation and in vivo brain data and compared with one-fiber and zero-fiber (isotropic) inversions.