Uncertainty in Fiber Tractography

O. Friman, C.-F. Westin
Eighth International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention (MICCAI'05)
Pages 107-114
October, 2005

Download full paper

Abstract

In this work we address the uncertainty associated with fiber paths obtained in white matter fiber tractography. This uncertainty, which arises for example from noise and partial volume effects, is quantified using a Bayesian modeling framework. The theory for estimating the probability of a connection between two areas in the brain is presented, and a new model of the local water diffusion profile is introduced. We also provide a theorem that facilitates the estimation of the parameters in this diffusion model, making the presented method simple to implement.

a) Example pdf's of the local fiber orientation taken at three different locations. A uniform prior for the step direction was used when generating these pdf's, i.e, the previous step direction has no influence. b) 3,000 fiber samples originating in a point located at the splenium of Corpus callosum (marked in c)). Each fiber is colored according to how the probability evolves along its path. c) Probability map of the existence of a fiber going from the marked point to all other voxels in the image slice. The map was generated using the fiber samples in b). d) More examples of fiber samples. The sampling was started in the four different points marked by the arrows, and the fibers are colored accordingly.

Reference

Friman O, Westin CF. Uncertainty in fiber tractography. In Eighth International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention (MICCAI'05), Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3749. Palm Springs, CA, USA, 2005;107-114.

Bibtex entry

@InProceedings{frimanMICCAI05,
  author         = {O. Friman and C.-F. Westin},                               
  title          = {Uncertainty in Fiber Tractography},                        
  booktitle      = {Eighth International Conference on Medical Image Computing 
                   and  Computer-Assisted Intervention (MICCAI'05)},           
  pages          = {107--114},                                                 
  year           = {2005},                                                     
  series         = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3749},                   
  address        = {Palm Springs, CA, USA},                                    
  month          = {October}
}

Grants

NIH P41-RR13218 (NAC)