FIBER DIRECTION ESTIMATION, SMOOTHING AND TRACKING IN DIFFUSION MRI

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Wong, Raymond K. W.; Lee, Thomas C. M.; Paul, Debashis; Peng, Jie
• 署名单位: Iowa State University; University of California System; University of California Davis
• 刊物名称: ANNALS OF APPLIED STATISTICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1932-6157
• DOI: 10.1214/15-AOAS880
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 1137-1156
• 关键词: statistical-analysis; tractography; brain; ORIENTATIONS

摘要

Diffusion magnetic resonance imaging is an imaging technology designed to probe anatomical architectures of biological samples in an in vivo and noninvasive manner through measuring water diffusion. The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, it proposes a new method to identify and estimate multiple diffusion directions within a voxel through a new and identifiable parametrization of the widely used multi-tensor model. Unlike many existing methods, this method focuses on the estimation of diffusion directions rather than the diffusion tensors. Second, this paper proposes a novel direction smoothing method which greatly improves direction estimation in regions with crossing fibers. This smoothing method is shown to have excellent theoretical and empirical properties. Last, this paper develops a fiber tracking algorithm that can handle multiple directions within a voxel. The overall methodology is illustrated with simulated data and a data set collected for the study of Alzheimer's disease by the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI).