Visualizing Fiber Pathways in Regions with Complex White Matter Architecture

Sjoerd B. Vos¹, Max A. Viergever¹, Alexander Leemans¹

We present a new tractography visualization for HARDI data that captures the local configuration of crossing fibers and displays it along the fiber trajectory. This tract visualization object can be considered as the continuous envelope of voxel-based three-dimensional HARDI glyphs along the fiber pathway (also known as a hyperstreamline), combining the local diffusion information derived from these glyphs, e.g., the fiber orientation distribution, with the global anatomical information obtained from tractography. These HARDI hyperstreamlines create a more complete visualization, especially for tracts that traverse through areas of complex fiber configurations, aiding in our understanding of the white matter architectural configuration.