AMURA with standard single-shell acquisition can detect changes beyond the Diffusion Tensor: a migraine clinical study

AMURA (Apparent Measures Using Reduced Acquisitions) is an alternative formulation to drastically reduce the number of samples needed for the estimation of diffusion properties related to the Ensemble Average diffusion Propagator (EAP). Although these measures were initially intended for medium-to-high b-values, in this work we evaluate their performance in DTI-like acquisitions. Fifty healthy controls, 54 episodic migraine (EM) and 56 chronic migraine (CM) patients were compared, using a single-shell diffusion scheme at b=1000 s/mm2. We compare AMURA measures (return-to-origin, return-to-axis and return-to-plane probabilities) to traditional DTI measures. Differences between EM and controls were only detectable using the return-to-origin probability.