Dataset Information

Fiber visualization for preoperative glioma assessment: Tractography versus local connectivity mapping.

ABSTRACT: In diffusion MRI, the advent of high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) and HARDI with compressed sensing (HARDI+CS) has led to clinically practical signal acquisition techniques which allow for the assessment of white matter architecture in routine patient studies. However, the reconstruction and visualization of fiber pathways by tractography has not yet been established as a standard methodology which can easily be applied. This is due to various algorithmic problems, such as a lack of robustness, error propagation and the necessity of fine-tuning parameters depending on the clinical question. In the framework of a clinical study of glioma patients, we compare two different whole-brain tracking methods to a local connectivity mapping approach which has recently shown promising results in an adaptation to diffusion MRI. The ability of the three methods to correctly depict fiber affection is analyzed by comparing visualization results to representations of local diffusion profiles provided by orientation distribution functions (ODFs). Our results suggest that methods beyond fiber tractography, which visualize local connectedness rather than global connectivity, should be evaluated further for pre-surgical assessment of fiber affection.

SUBMITTER: Schult T

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6907809 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Fiber visualization for preoperative glioma assessment: Tractography versus local connectivity mapping.

Schult Thomas T Hauser Till-Karsten TK Klose Uwe U Hurth Helene H Ehricke Hans-Heino HH

PloS one 20191212 12

In diffusion MRI, the advent of high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) and HARDI with compressed sensing (HARDI+CS) has led to clinically practical signal acquisition techniques which allow for the assessment of white matter architecture in routine patient studies. However, the reconstruction and visualization of fiber pathways by tractography has not yet been established as a standard methodology which can easily be applied. This is due to various algorithmic problems, such as a lack ...[more]

PMID: 31830068

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Project description:BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:Diffusion MRI tractography enables to investigate white matter pathways noninvasively by reconstructing estimated fiber pathways. However, such tractograms remain biased and nonquantitative. Several techniques have been proposed to reestablish the link between tractography and tissue microstructure by modeling the diffusion signal or fiber orientation distribution (FOD) with the given tractogram and optimizing each fiber or compartment contribution according to the diffusion signal or FOD. Nevertheless, deriving a reliable quantification of connectivity strength between different brain areas is still a challenge. Moreover, evaluating the quality of a tractogram and measuring the possible error sources contained in a specific reconstructed fiber bundle also remains difficult. Lastly, all of these optimization techniques fail if specific fiber populations within a tractogram are underrepresented, for example, due to algorithmic constraints, anatomical properties, fiber geometry or seeding patterns. METHODS:In this work, we propose an approach which enables the inspection of the quality of a tractogram optimization by evaluating the residual error signal and its FOD representation. The automated fiber quantification (AFQ) is applied, whereby the framework is extended to reflect not only scalar diffusion metrics along a fiber bundle, but also directionally dependent FOD amplitudes along and perpendicular to the fiber direction. Furthermore, we also present an up-sampling procedure to increase the number of streamlines of a given fiber population. The introduced error metrics and fiber up-sampling method are tested and evaluated on single-shell diffusion data sets of 16 healthy volunteers. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:Analyzing the introduced error measures on specific fiber bundles shows a considerable improvement in applying the up-sampling method. Additionally, the error metrics provide a useful tool to spot and identify potential error sources in tractograms.

Dataset Information

Fiber visualization for preoperative glioma assessment: Tractography versus local connectivity mapping.

Publications

Fiber visualization for preoperative glioma assessment: Tractography versus local connectivity mapping.

Similar Datasets

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