Bundle-specific tractography

Abstract

Tractography allows the investigation of white matter fascicles. However, it requires a large amount of streamlines to be generated to cover the full spatial extent of desired bundles. In this work, a bundle-specific tractography algorithm was developed to increase reproducibility and sensitivity of white matter fascicle virtual dissection, thus avoiding the computation of a full brain tractography. Using fascicle priors from manually segmented bundles templates or atlases, we propose a novel local orientation enhancement methodology that overcomes reconstruction difficulties in crossing regions. To reduce unnecessary computation, tractography seeding and tracking were restricted to specific locales within the brain. These additions yield better spatial coverage, increasing the quality of the fanning in crossing regions, helping to accurately represent fascicle shape. In this work, tractography methods were analyzed and compared using a single bundle of interest, the corticospinal tract.