WHITE MATTER INTEGRITY IN TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY: EFFECTS OF PERMISSIBLE FIBER TURNING ANGLE - PubMed (original) (raw)

WHITE MATTER INTEGRITY IN TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY: EFFECTS OF PERMISSIBLE FIBER TURNING ANGLE

Emily L Dennis et al. Proc IEEE Int Symp Biomed Imaging. 2015 Apr.

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of death and disability in children. Diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) methods have been shown to be especially sensitive to white matter abnormalities in TBI. We used our newly developed autoMATE algorithm (automated multi-atlas tract extraction) to map altered WM integrity in TBI. Even so, tractography methods include a free parameter that limits the maximum permissible turning angles for extracted fibers, with little investigation of how this may affect statistical group comparisons. Here, we examined WM integrity calculated over a range of fiber turning angles to determine to what extent this parameter affects our ability to detect group differences. Fiber turning angle threshold has a subtle, but sometimes significant, effect on the differences we were able to detect between TBI and healthy children.

Keywords: High angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI); fiber turning angle; tractography; traumatic brain injury.

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Figures

Figure 1

Figure 1. Workflow

The workflow of autoMATE, described in the methods section and further detailed in [1].

Figure 2

Figure 2. Output of autoMATE

Left – whole brain tractography, right – 3 views of the 18 tract ROIs, extracted from one example subject.

Figure 2

Figure 2. Tract results – post-acute

Point-wise differences in FA between TBI and controls in the post-acute phase in the 30° condition. The –log10 _p_-values correspond to the color bar.

Figure 3

Figure 3. Tract results – chronic (sample)

Point-wise differences in FA between TBI and controls in the chronic phase in the cc_temporal tract across degree thresholds. The –log10 _p_-values corresponding to the color bar; we only show cc_temporal here due to space constraints.

References

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