A criterion for the positive semidefiniteness of a diffusivity function

Abstract

In magnetic resonance imaging, high angular resolution diffusion imaging (abbr. HARDI) is used to characterize non-Gaussian diffusion processes. One approach to analyzing HARDI data is to model the apparent diffusion coefficient with higher order diffusion tensors from a diffusivity function. An intrinsic property of the diffusivity function is positive semi-definite, which reflects the phenomenon of water molecular diffusion in complicated biological tissue environments. In this paper, we provide a workable criterion for judging the positive semi-definiteness of a diffusivity function and shows that it is effective via two numerical examples.