The variability of MR axon radii estimates in the human brain

The noninvasive quantification of axonal morphology provides an exciting avenue to gain understanding of the function and structure of the central nervous system. Accurate non-invasive mapping of micron-sized axon radii using commonly applied neuroimaging techniques, i.e., diffusion-weighted MRI, has been bolstered by recent hardware developments. In this work, we present the whole brain characterization of the effective MR axon radius and evaluate the inter- and intra-scanner test-retest repeatability and reproducibility to promote the further development of the effective MR axon radius as a neuroimaging biomarker. We observe a coefficient-of-variability of approximately 10% in the voxelwise estimation of the effective MR radius in the test-retest analysis, but demonstrate that the performance can be improved fourfold using a customized along-tract analyses.