Dual Tensor for Tract-Based Analysis: Towards Application to Routine Clinical Diffusion Images

Virendra Mishra¹, Hao Huang¹

Tract-based analysis, in contrast to voxelwise analysis, has the advantage of delineating the integrity of white matter at the tract level rather than voxel. However, in tract-based analysis, underestimation of the FA of target tracts still exists when they go through the crossing fiber area. In this abstract, we proposed an improved tract-based approach, DTTA (Dual Tensor for Tract based Analysis) to restore the FA values of the targeted tract along its path while removing the influence of crossed fibers. It integrates spherical harmonics (SH) to identify the crossing fiber location and Levenberg-Marquardt estimation algorithm to fit dual tensors.