Mean q-ball strings obtained by constrained procrustes analysis with point sliding

Abstract

The idea underpinning the work we present herein is to design robust and objective tools for brain white matter (WM) morphometry. We focus on WM tracts, and propose to represent them by their mean lines, to which we associate the attributes derived from high-angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI). The definition of the tract mean line derives directly from the geometry of the tract fibres. We determine the fibre point correspondences and impact factors of individual fibres, upon which we estimate average HARDI models along the tract mean lines. This way we obtain a compact tract representation that exploits all the available information, and is at the same time free of the outlier influence and undesired tract edge effects. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.