title: Estimation of fiber orientation probability density functions in high angular resolution diffusion imaging.
abstract: An estimator of the Orientation Probability Density Function (OPDF) of fiber tracts in the white matter of the brain from High Angular Resolution Diffusion data is presented. Unlike Q-Balls, which use the Funk-Radon transform to estimate the radial projection of the 3D Probability Density Function, the Jacobian of the spherical coordinates is included in the Funk-Radon approximation to the radial integral. Thus, true angular marginalizations are computed, which allows a strict probabilistic interpretation. Extensive experiments with both synthetic and real data show the better capability of our method to characterize complex micro-architectures compared to other related approaches (Q-Balls and Diffusion Orientation Transform), especially for low values of the diffusion weighting parameter.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Image Processing, University of Valladolid, Spain. atriveg@lpi.tel.uva.es
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tristán-Vega
authors.forename: Carl-Fredrik
authors.initials: CF
authors.lastname: Westin
authors.forename: Santiago
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Aja-Fernández
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D038524:Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D009413:Nerve Fibers, Myelinated / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D016008:Statistical Distributions