Findings in schizophrenia by tract-oriented DT-MRI analysis

Abstract

This paper presents a tract-oriented analysis of diffusion tensor (DT) images of the human brain. We demonstrate that unlike the commonly used ROI-based methods for population studies, our technique is sensitive to the local variation of diffusivity parameters along the fiber tracts. We show the strength of the proposed approach in identifying the differences in schizophrenic data compared to controls. Statistically significant drops in fractional anisotropy are observed along the genu and bilaterally in the splenium, as well as an increase in principal eigenvalue in uncinate fasciculus. This is the first tract-oriented clinical study in which an anatomical atlas is used to guide the algorithm. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.