title: VOXEL-WISE GROUP ANALYSIS OF DTI.
abstract: Diffusion tensor MRI (DTI) is now a widely used modality to investigate the fiber tissues in vivo, especially the white matter in brain. An automatic pipeline is described in this paper to conduct a localized voxel-wise multiple-subject group comparison study of DTI. The pipeline consists of 3 steps: 1) Preprocessing, including image format converting, image quality check, eddy-current and motion artifact correction, skull stripping and tensor image estimation, 2) study-specific unbiased DTI atlas computation via affine followed by fluid nonlinear registration and warping of all individual DTI images into the common atlas space to achieve voxel-wise correspondence, 3) voxelwise statistical analysis via heterogeneous linear regression and wild bootstrap technique for correcting for multiple comparisons. This pipeline was applied to process data from a fitness and aging study and preliminary results are presented. The results show that this fully automatic pipeline is suitable for voxel-wise group DTI analysis.
authors.affiliation: Neuro Image Research and Analysis Laboratories, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina ; Dept. of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
authors.forename: Zhexing
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Hongtu
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Bonita L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Marks
authors.forename: Laurence M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Katz
authors.forename: Casey B
authors.initials: CB
authors.lastname: Goodlett
authors.forename: Guido
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Gerig
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Styner
keywords: Diffusion tensor; Group comparison; MRI; Voxel-wise analysis