title: A tractography comparison between turboprop and spin-echo echo-planar diffusion tensor imaging.
abstract: The development of accurate, non-invasive methods for mapping white matter fiber-tracts is of critical importance. However, fiber-tracking is typically performed on diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data obtained with echo-planar-based imaging techniques (EPI), which suffer from susceptibility-related image artifacts, and image warping due to eddy-currents. Thus, a number of white matter fiber-bundles mapped using EPI-based DTI data are distorted and/or terminated early. This severely limits the clinical potential of fiber-tracking. In contrast, Turboprop-MRI provides images with significantly fewer susceptibility and eddy-current-related artifacts than EPI. The purpose of this work was to compare fiber-tracking results obtained from DTI data acquired with Turboprop-DTI and EPI-based DTI. It was shown that, in brain regions near magnetic field inhomogeneities, white matter fiber-bundles obtained with EPI-based DTI were distorted and/or partially detected, when magnetic susceptibility-induced distortions were not corrected. After correction, residual distortions were still present and several fiber-tracts remained partially detected. In contrast, when using Turboprop-DTI data, all traced fiber-tracts were in agreement with known anatomy. The inter-session reproducibility of tractography results was higher for Turboprop than EPI-based DTI data in regions near field inhomogeneities. Thus, Turboprop may be a more appropriate DTI data acquisition technique for tracing white matter fibers near regions with significant magnetic susceptibility differences, as well as in longitudinal studies of such fibers. However, the intra-session reproducibility of tractography results was higher for EPI-based than Turboprop DTI data. Thus, EPI-based DTI may be more advantageous for tracing fibers minimally affected by field inhomogeneities.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA.
authors.forename: Minzhi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gui
authors.forename: Huiling
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Peng
authors.forename: John D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Carew
authors.forename: Maciej S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Lesniak
authors.forename: Konstantinos
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Arfanakis
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D038524:Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D009413:Nerve Fibers, Myelinated / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity