Phantoms to be imaged were immersed in a 10 mm glass tube of cyclohexane (Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO, 99.5%) for 7 days to fully solvate the samples. Previous studies have shown that solvation in cyclohexane maintains fiber cohesion and does not promote swelling or shrinking of the fibers [7 (link)]. cyclohexane has also been shown to enter the pores in the material, is MR-visible, and has a similar diffusion coefficient to water in biological tissues [9 (link)].
DTI was performed on a 9.4 T Agilent Small Animal Imaging system using a standard diffusion spin-echo pulse sequence with 6 directions and a b = 0 s/mm2 image. MR images were acquired with a TR of 2000 ms, TE of 30 ms, FOV of 3 cm × 3 cm, matrix size of 256x256, slice thickness of 1 mm. Diffusion parameters included 6 b-values that ranged from 0–5000 s/mm2, Δ = 20 ms, δ = 2 ms. The diffusion gradients included two directions that spanned in plane (across the fibers) and four directions that spanned perpendicular to the imaging plane (along the fibers) in pattern that sampled q-space evenly.
DTI was performed on a 9.4 T Agilent Small Animal Imaging system using a standard diffusion spin-echo pulse sequence with 6 directions and a b = 0 s/mm2 image. MR images were acquired with a TR of 2000 ms, TE of 30 ms, FOV of 3 cm × 3 cm, matrix size of 256x256, slice thickness of 1 mm. Diffusion parameters included 6 b-values that ranged from 0–5000 s/mm2, Δ = 20 ms, δ = 2 ms. The diffusion gradients included two directions that spanned in plane (across the fibers) and four directions that spanned perpendicular to the imaging plane (along the fibers) in pattern that sampled q-space evenly.