Clustering Fiber Tracts Using Normalized Cuts

A. Brun, H. Knutsson, H. J. Park, M. E. Shenton, C.-F. Westin
Seventh International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention (MICCAI'04)
Pages 368-375
September, 2004

Download full paper

Abstract

In this paper we present a framework for unsupervised segmentation of white matter fiber traces obtained from diffusion weighted MRI data. Fiber traces are compared pairwise to create a weighted undirected graph which is partitioned into coherent sets using the normalized cut (Ncut) criterion. A simple and yet effective method for pairwise comparison of fiber traces is presented which in combination with theNcut criterion is shown to produce plausible segmentations of both synthetic and real fiber trace data. Segmentations are visualized as colored stream-tubes or transformed to a segmentation of voxel space, revealing structures in a way that looks promising for future explorative studies of diffusion weighted

Pseudo-coloring of fiber traces. RGB colors are derived directly from scaled versions of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th eigenvector of (D-W)/D. Using a very large Gaussian kernel, o = 100, results in a soft clustering effect. Note the enhanced perception of fiber connectivity and shape, despite the lack of discrete clusters. Left: Whole brain white matter visualized using pseudo-colored fiber traces. Middle: A subset of the white matter fiber traces visualized using pseudo-colored fiber traces. Right: Pseudo-coloring of voxels belonging to white matter enhance perception of connectivity in slices or volumes.To fill in holes in white matter when fiber traces were transformed to voxels, a nearest-neighbor approach combined with a white matter mask was used.

Reference

Brun A, Knutsson H, Park HJ, Shenton ME, Westin CF. Clustering fiber tracts using normalized cuts. In Seventh International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention (MICCAI'04), Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Rennes - Saint Malo, France, 2004;368-375.

Bibtex entry

@InProceedings{brunMICCAI04,
  author         = {A. Brun and H. Knutsson and H. J. Park and M. E. Shenton   
                   and C.-F. Westin},                                          
  title          = {Clustering Fiber Tracts Using Normalized Cuts},            
  booktitle      = {Seventh International Conference on Medical Image Computing
                   and  Computer-Assisted Intervention (MICCAI'04)},           
  pages          = {368--375},                                                 
  year           = {2004},                                                     
  series         = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science},                        
  address        = {Rennes - Saint Malo, France},                              
  month          = {September}
}

Grants

NIH P41-RR13218 (NAC), NIH R01-MH50747, CIMIT

Research areas

DTMRI, Tensor

Copyright Information

© Springer-Verlag (Berlin - Heidelberg - New York). Copyrights to this PDF document are held by Springer-Verlag. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the Springer-Verlag Publishing.

This material is presented electronically to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Certain rights are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the author and/or copyright holder.