Title
Efficient global fiber tracking on multi-dimensional diffusion direction maps
Abstract
Global fiber tracking algorithms have recently been proposed which were able to compute results of unprecedented quality. They account for avoiding accumulation errors by a global optimization process at the cost of a high computation time of several hours or even days. In this paper, we introduce a novel global fiber tracking algorithm which, for the first time, globally optimizes the underlying diffusion direction map obtained from DTI or HARDI data, instead of single fiber segments. As a consequence, the number of iterations in the optimization process can drastically be reduced by about three orders of magnitude. Futhermore, in contrast to all previous algorithms, the density of the tracked fibers can be adjusted after the optimization within a few seconds. We evaluated our method for diffusion-weighted images obtained from software phantoms, healthy volunteers, and tumor patients. We show that difficult fiber bundles, e.g., the visual pathways or tracts for different motor functions can be determined and separated in an excellent quality. Futhermore, crossing and kissing bundles are correctly resolved. On current standard hardware, a dense fiber tracking result of a whole brain can be determined in less than half an hour which is a strong improvement compared to previous work.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1117/12.909932
Proceedings of SPIE
Keywords
Field
DocType
diffusion imaging,global fiber tracking
Orders of magnitude (numbers),Computer vision,Multi dimensional,Fiber,Global optimization,Computer science,Software,Artificial intelligence,Fiber bundle,Computation
Conference
Volume
ISSN
Citations 
8314
0277-786X
3
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.40
0
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Jan Klein19510.94
benjamin kohler230.40
Horst K. Hahn345072.61