Qiuyun Fan1,2, Xin Hong2, Nicole
Davis3,4, Laurie E. Cutting3,5, Adam W. Anderson1,2
1Department of Biomedical
Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States; 2Vanderbilt
University Institute of Imaging Science, Nashville, TN, United States; 3Vanderbilt
University Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development, Nashville, TN,
United States; 4Department of Radiology & Radiological
Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States; 5Department
of Special Education, Vanderbilt Peabody, Nashville, TN, United States
DTI provides reproducible measures of fiber integrity, although it is unable to resolve crossing fibers. HARDI methods can resolve crossings, but do not provide estimates of the intrinsic anisotropy in each fiber. In this work, we propose an approach that resolves crossing fibers and estimates the intrinsic diffusion properties of each fiber. Multiple kernels are allowed in spherical deconvolution and multiple shells in q-space are sampled in order to estimate the kernel for each resolvable fiber in a voxel. The results can potentially provide more accurate analysis of the properties of fiber pathways in the brain.
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