Improved fiber tracking for diffusion tensor MRI

Abstract

Diffusion tensor MRI is currently the only imaging method that can provide information about water molecule diffusion direction, which reflects the patterns of white matter connectivity in the human brain. This paper presents a fiber-tracking algorithm based on an improved streamline tracking technique (STT). Synthetic datasets were designed to test the stability of the fiber tracking method and its ability to handle areas with uncertainty or isotropic tensors. In vivo DT-MRI data of the human brain has also been used to evaluate the performance of the improved STT algorithm, demonstrating the strength of the proposed technique. © Springer-Verlag 2004.