Patent ID: 7319328

Claim:
A system for processing magnetic resonance imaging data, comprising: a magnetic resonance imaging scanner; a scanner system controller adapted to supply a diffusion tensor imaging pulse sequence to the magnetic resonance imaging scanner and receive and digitize magnetic resonance image signals therefrom; and a computer system coupled with the scanner control system adapted to receive a digital magnetic resonance image comprising a plurality of voxels, calculate a respective diffusion coefficient for each of a plurality of gradient directions along which the imaging data was obtained for each of the plurality of voxels, calculate a sum of each respective diffusion coefficient calculated for each of the plurality of gradient directions for each of the plurality of voxels, calculate an average diffusion coefficient by dividing the sum by a number of the plurality of diffusion gradient directions for each of the plurality of voxels, calculate a directional anisotropy value from the average diffusion coefficient value and each respective diffusion coefficient for each of the plurality of voxels, and generate a color-coded image from the directional anisotropy value calculated for each of the plurality of voxels, wherein the color-coded image comprises a first color designating superior-inferior, a second color designating right-left, and a third color designating anterior-posterior.