Anchor-constrained plausibility (ACP): A novel concept for assessing tractography and reducing false-positives

Abstract

Diffusion tractography suffers from a difficult sensitivity-specificity trade-off. We present an approach that leverages knowledge about anatomically well-known tracts (anchor tracts) in a tractogram to quantitatively assess the remaining tracts (candidate tracts) according to their plausibility in conjunction with this context information. We show that our approach has the potential for greatly reducing the number of false positive tracts in fiber tractography while maintaining high sensitivities using phantom experiments (AUC 0.91). To investigate the applicability of the approach in vivo, we analyze 110 subjects of the Human Connectome Project young adult study. We demonstrate how the approach may be used for structured analysis of in vivo tractography and show supporting evidence for tracts previously discussed in the literature, while potentially sparking discussions about the role of others.