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Atlas‐Based Versus Individual‐Based Fiber Tracking of the Corpus Callosum in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis: Reliability and Clinical Correlations
Author(s) -
Marcella Laganà Maria,
Ceccarelli Antonia,
Giulia Preti Maria,
Venturelli Chiara,
Pia Sormani Maria,
Cavarretta Rosella,
Baselli Giuseppe,
Cecconi Pietro,
Caputo Domenico,
Rovaris Marco
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of neuroimaging
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 64
eISSN - 1552-6569
pISSN - 1051-2284
DOI - 10.1111/j.1552-6569.2011.00650.x
Subject(s) - corpus callosum , diffusion mri , medicine , fractional anisotropy , multiple sclerosis , atlas (anatomy) , white matter , tractography , brain atlas , artificial intelligence , magnetic resonance imaging , nuclear medicine , radiology , pathology , computer science , anatomy , psychiatry
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE In multiple sclerosis (MS), the presence of lesions and normal‐appearing white matter damage may affect the reliability of diffusion tensor (DT) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)‐based tractography. We compared the performance of an individual‐based method for corpus callosum (CC) fiber tracking in MS with those of two atlas‐based methods. METHODS Brain DT MRI scans were acquired from 35 patients with MS and 18 age‐matched healthy volunteers (HV). DT‐derived metrics from the CC—the mean diffusivity (MD) and fractional anisotropy (FA)—were calculated using an individual‐based and two atlas‐based methods with different types of subject registration (linear and nonlinear) to a CC atlas. Customized termination criteria were applied to stop the tracking algorithm when using the individual‐based method. RESULTS All the methods were able to distinguish between MS patients and HV. Using the individual‐based method, stronger relationships were found between CC DT‐derived metrics and the subjects’ clinical condition. CONCLUSION CC DT tractography using an individual‐based method is more sensitive than the atlas‐based ones to tract‐specific alterations related to MS disability. An atlas‐based method with nonlinear registration can be a valid alternative when an automated postprocessing is warranted, such as in the case of high volumes of data.