Belief propagation based segmentation of white matter tracts in DTI

Abstract

This paper presents a belief propagation approach to the segmentation of the major white matter tracts in diffusion tensor images of the human brain. Unlike tractography methods that sample multiple fibers to be bundled together, we define a Markov field directly on the diffusion tensors to separate the main fiber tracts at the voxel level. A prior model of shape and direction guides a full segmentation of the brain into known fiber tracts; additional, unspecified fibers; and isotropic regions. The method is evaluated on various data sets from an atlasing project, healthy subjects, and multiple sclerosis patients. © 2009 Springer-Verlag.