Fiber Tract Based Interrogation of White Matter

J. T. Duda, H. Zhang, T. J. Simon, J. C. Gee Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States, Computer Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States, M.I.N.D. Institute, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, United States, Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States Introduction Diffusion Tensor MRI (DT-MRI) has proven useful in the examination of white matter in the human brain. DT-MRI provides information regarding the local orientation of white matter fiber bundles. This orientation information allows one to trace and visualize fiber bundles [1]. DT-MRI also provides important structural information regarding white matter such as fractional anisotropy (FA), which provides an estimate of the degree of directional specificity of diffusion. In this paper, we present a method that uses fiber tracking to identify white matter fiber bundles and interrogate the structural properties of the underlying tissue.