Purpose: To evaluate fiber tracking strategy in terms of acquisition schemes in conjunction with four algorithms used in clinical routine, we studied one of the major tracts, anatomically well known, and which should be preserved as much as possible during neurosurgery: the corticospinal tract. Materials and Methods:Two identical exams, composed of three DTI acquisition schemes (6, 15, and 32 gradient directions), were performed on 12 healthy subjects during two different sessions. For each subject, intra-operator, and inter-exam reproducibility was quantitatively calculated from different fiber tracking algorithms: three deterministic and a probabilistic one. Inter-exam reproducibility was evaluated comparing fiber tracking results from the repetition of the same acquisition one month apart and variation of the fiber density distribution percentile.Results: For each fiber tracking algorithm, the best reproducibility result is obtained in case of 50% of fiber density and for the number of directions equal to 32. The reproducibility is improved using the probabilistic algorithm. Conclusion:This study highlights increased reliability of reproducibility results based on the number of directions used during the acquisition. The method of tractography used and the choice of adequate density fiber tract greatly improve the results. DIFFUSION TENSOR IMAGING (DTI) and tractography have the potential to depict fiber architecture within the white matter. DTI has emerged as a noninvasive imaging modality able to provide in vivo information about the white matter structure (1). The method is based on the sensitivity of measured diffusivity of the water protons to the microstructural environment. The diffusion paths of water molecules are longer along the axis of the myelinated fibers than perpendicular according to the degree of myelination, axonal membrane and subvoxel coherence (2,3). White matter tractography is a promising application of diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) (4-8). It uses the directional information of diffusion tensor maps to estimate connection pathways in white matter. Tractography studies of major white matter tracts in the human brain appear to be in good agreement with the anatomical results obtained with dissection or histological methods (5,6,(8)(9)(10). The knowledge of the architectonical organization and connectivity may contribute to a better understanding of brain anatomy, both in physiological and pathological conditions. It may be useful to assess how brain organization is affected by disorders such as trauma or tumor growth. Therefore, it is very important to determine the relationship between the lesions and the eloquent white matter tracts so that appropriate neurosurgical approaches can be designed to avoid destroying important fiber tracts. However, the question remains whether the DTI fiber tractography results are reproducible and reliable enough to be used as a tool for clinical routine. The reliability and reproducibility of these techniques are known to be limited by the quality of ...
Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) and tractography are able to model fiber architecture within the white matter. In the laboratory, we developped a software Sisyphe, which is an integrated environment for neuroimaging post-processing and visualization. In this work, we extend this tool to further incorporate white matter DTI fiber tracking. We evaluate the reproducibility and reliability of our algorithm by studying the pyramidal tract.
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