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MRI assessment of neonatal brain maturation

Nadine J Girard, Philippe Dory-Lautrec, Meriam Koob and Anca Melania Dediu

MRI is currently the method of choice to evaluate brain maturation. MRI provides improved anatomical details and accurate depiction of the morphological and signal changes of normal brain development and its disorders. It also gives insight into the microstructure of brain tissue and into mechanisms of injury through diffusion-weighted imaging and diffusion-tensor imaging, and into the brain’s biochemical composition through proton MR spectroscopy. Computational automated techniques are emerging that help to generate a 3D fetal atlas by motion-corrected high resolution images, to more precisely identify volumetric brain growth, cortical folding over gestational age and white matter organization. Validations by clinical studies are still needed, especially in applying the computational methods in the different groups of pathology encountered in the pre- and neo-natal periods.