Streamline flows for white matter fibre pathway segmentation in diffusion MRI

Abstract

We introduce a fibre tract segmentation algorithm based on the geometric coherence of fibre orientations as indicated by a streamline flow model. The inference of local flow approximations motivates a pairwise consistency measure between fibre ODF maxima. We use this measure in a recursive algorithm to cluster consistent ODF maxima, leading to the segmentation of white matter pathways. The method requires minimal seeding compared to streamline tractography-based methods, and allows multiple tracts to pass through the same voxels. We illustrate the approach with a segmentation of the corpus callosum and one of the cortico-spinal tract, with each example seeded at a single voxel. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.