Simulation of water diffusion through a simple virtual cardiac cell model: optimization of Monte Carlo parameters and observation by simulated MRI

This paper describes a two fold strategy. First, we create a Monte-Carlo water diffusion simulator able to generate realistic synthetic diffusion data. Second, we observe this synthetical diffusion by simulating a virtual magnetic resonance diffusion imaging device (spin echo sequence). We show how to adequately run Monte-Carlo simulations in a cylindrical core (similar to a cardiac cell shape model) and we optimize the virtual imaging simulated parameters. We compare the virtual diffusion magnetic resonance signal obtained for various values of the parameters to the corresponding analytical models. We give a first analysis of the deviation results when usual clinical parameters are used.