Anatomically-constrained tractography: Improved diffusion MRI streamlines tractography through effective use of anatomical information

TY - JOUR

T1 - Anatomically-constrained tractography

T2 - Improved diffusion MRI streamlines tractography through effective use of anatomical information

AU - Smith, Robert E.

AU - Tournier, Jacques-Donald

AU - Calamante, Fernando

AU - Connelly, Alan

PY - 2012/9

Y1 - 2012/9

N2 - Diffusion MRI streamlines tractography suffers from a number of inherent limitations, one of which is the accurate determination of when streamlines should be terminated. Use of an accurate streamlines propagation mask from segmentation of an anatomical image confines the streamlines to the volume of the brain white matter, but does not take full advantage of all of the information available from such an image. We present a modular addition to streamlines tractography, which makes more effective use of the information available from anatomical image segmentation, and the known properties of the neuronal axons being reconstructed, to apply biologically realistic priors to the streamlines generated; we refer to this as "Anatomically-Constrained Tractography". Results indicate that some of the known false positives associated with tractography algorithms are prevented, such that the biological accuracy of the reconstructions should be improved, provided that state-of-the-art streamlines tractography methods are used.

AB - Diffusion MRI streamlines tractography suffers from a number of inherent limitations, one of which is the accurate determination of when streamlines should be terminated. Use of an accurate streamlines propagation mask from segmentation of an anatomical image confines the streamlines to the volume of the brain white matter, but does not take full advantage of all of the information available from such an image. We present a modular addition to streamlines tractography, which makes more effective use of the information available from anatomical image segmentation, and the known properties of the neuronal axons being reconstructed, to apply biologically realistic priors to the streamlines generated; we refer to this as "Anatomically-Constrained Tractography". Results indicate that some of the known false positives associated with tractography algorithms are prevented, such that the biological accuracy of the reconstructions should be improved, provided that state-of-the-art streamlines tractography methods are used.

KW - Magnetic resonance imaging

KW - Diffusion MRI

KW - Fibre-tracking

KW - Tractography

KW - Streamlines

KW - ECHO-PLANAR IMAGES

KW - WHITE-MATTER

KW - FIBER TRACKING

KW - HUMAN BRAIN

KW - INDUCED DISTORTION

KW - FRONT EVOLUTION

KW - SPIN-ECHO

KW - CONNECTIVITY

KW - RECONSTRUCTION

KW - ORGANIZATION

U2 - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.06.005

DO - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.06.005

M3 - Article

SN - 1053-8119

VL - 62

SP - 1924

EP - 1938

JO - NeuroImage

JF - NeuroImage

IS - 3

ER -