Journal Article

Multi-tissue spherical deconvolution of tensor-valued diffusion MRI

Szczepankiewicz, Filip, Jeurissen, Ben

2021

Overview

Multi-tissue constrained spherical deconvolution (MT-CSD) leverages the characteristic b-value dependency of each tissue type to estimate both the apparent tissue densities and the white matter fiber orientation distribution function from diffusion MRI data. In this work, we generalize MT-CSD to tensor-valued diffusion encoding with arbitrary b-tensor shapes. This enables the use of data encoded with mixed b-tensors, rather than being limited to the subset of linear (conventional) b-tensors. Using the complete set of data, including all b-tensor shapes, provides a categorical improvement in the estimation of apparent tissue densities, fiber ODF, and resulting tractography. Furthermore, we demonstrate that including multiple b-tensor shapes in the analysis provides improved contrast between tissue types, in particular between gray matter and white matter. We also show that our approach provides high-quality apparent tissue density maps and high-quality fiber tracking from data, even with sparse sampling across b-tensors that yield whole-brain coverage at 2 mm isotropic resolution in approximately 5:15 min.

• Publisher: Elsevier Inc,Elsevier Limited,Elsevier
• Subject: B-tensors / Brain Mapping / Clinical Medicine / Diffusion Tensor Imaging - methods / Healthy Volunteers / Humans / Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Klinisk medicin / Magnetic resonance imaging / Medical and Health Sciences / Medicin och hälsovetenskap / Multi-tissue constrained spherical deconvolution / Multidimensional diffusion encoding / Radiologi och bildbehandling / Radiology and Medical Imaging / Substantia alba / Substantia grisea / Tensor-valued diffusion encoding / Tractography / White Matter - diagnostic imaging