title: PASTA: pointwise assessment of streamline tractography attributes.
abstract: Diffusion tensor MRI tractography aims to reconstruct noninvasively the 3D trajectories of white matter fasciculi within the brain, providing neuroscientists and clinicians with a potentially useful tool for mapping brain architecture. While this technique is widely used to visualize white matter pathways, the associated uncertainty in fiber orientation and artifacts have, to date, not been visualized in conjunction with the trajectory data. In this work, the bootstrap method was used to determine the distributions of diffusion indices such as trace and anisotropy, together with the uncertainty in fiber orientation. A novel visualization scheme was developed to encode this information at each point along reconstructed trajectories. By integrating these schemes into a graphical user interface, a new tool which we call PASTA (Pointwise Assessment of Streamline Tractography Attributes) was created to facilitate identification of artifacts in tractography that would otherwise go undetected.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Neuroimaging Sciences, Institute of Psychiatry, London SE5 8AF, UK. d.jones@iop.kcl.ac.uk
authors.forename: Derek K
authors.initials: DK
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.forename: Adam R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Travis
authors.forename: Greg
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Eden
authors.forename: Carlo
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pierpaoli
authors.forename: Peter J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Basser
mesh_terms: D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D038524:Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D009412:Nerve Fibers / Q000648:ultrastructure; D014584:User-Computer Interface