Two-tensor Fiber Tractography

Abstract

Estimating white matter fiber pathways from a diffusion tensor MRI dataset has many important applications in medical research. However, the standard approach of performing tracking on single-tensor estimates per voxel is confounded by regions of multiple pathways in different directions. Building on previous work for estimating multiple tensors from MR value partitioning, we present here a two-tensor fiber tractography method that estimates two tensors from the acquired MR values, interpolated at each step of the path, and follows the tensor most aligned with the current direction. The method is verified on a synthetic dataset and applied to two locations of fiber crossing in an in vivo diffusion MRI