Generating diffusion MRI scalar maps from T1-weighted images using Reversible GANs

Abstract

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) provides valuable insights into brain tissue microstructure, but acquiring high-quality DTI data is time-intensive and not always feasible. To mitigate data scarcity and enhance accessibility, we investigate the generation of synthetic DTI scalar maps--specifically mean diffusivity (MD)--from structural 3D volumetric T1-weighted brain MRI using a reversible generative adversarial network (RevGAN). Unlike conventional pipelines requiring multiple steps, our approach enables a single-step translation from T1 to diffusion-derived measures. We assess the quality and utility of the synthetic maps in two downstream tasks: sex classification and Alzheimers disease classification. Performance comparisons between models trained on real and synthetic DTI maps demonstrate that RevGAN-generated images retain meaningful microstructural features and offer competitive accuracy, underscoring their potential for data augmentation and analysis in neuroimaging workflows. We also examine how well models trained on these data generalize to a new population dataset from India (NIMHANS cohort).