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Abstract #3629

The Effect of the Kurtosis on the Accuracy of Diffusion Tensor Based Fiber Tractography

Chantal M.W. Tax1, Sjoerd B. Vos1, Jelle Veraart2, Jan Sijbers2, Max A. Viergever1, Alexander Leemans1

1Image Sciences Institute, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands; 2Visionlab, Department of Physics,, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium


In addition to DTI, DKI quantifies the degree to which the diffusion is non-Gaussian and it can be used to estimate typical DTI measures more accurately but with lower precision. In this work, the difference in orientation information of the diffusion tensor was compared between DTI and DKI. There is a systematic deviation in orientation of the principle eigenvector, showing the difference in accuracy. In addition, deterministic and probabilistic fiber tracking on real diffusion MRI data confirms this difference in orientation information. In conclusion, the architectural configuration of the DKI based fiber pathways is more accurate than that of DTI.