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Abstract #1104

Validation of Tractography Against in vivo Tracing in the Macaque Visual System Effect of Distance Correction

Hojjatollah Azadbakht1, 2, Laura M. Parkes1, 2, Hamied A. Haroon1, 2, Mark Augarth3, Nikos K. Logothetis3, Alex de Crespigny4, Helen E. DArceuil4, Geoffrey J M Parker1, 2

1Imaging Science and Biomedical Engineering, School of Cancer and Imaging Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom; 2The Biomedical Imaging Institute, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom; 3Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tubingen, Germany; 4Athinoula A. Martinos Center, MGH, Charlestown, MA, United States


Validation of diffusion imaging has proved difficult due to the lack of an adequate gold-standard. In this work, the macaque visual system is used as a model, in which due to an extensive literature of in-vivo and post-mortem tracer studies, true connections are well-established. We performed probabilistic tractography on diffusion imaging data from two in-vitro macaque brains, and comparisons were made between identified connections at different thresholds of connection strength, and connections identified in the visual system wiring map of Felleman & van Essen. The effects of streamline-length based correction of the distance bias of probabilistic tractography were also explored.