Comparison of Diffusion MRI Predictions and Histology in the Macaque Brain

Stamatios N. Sotiropoulos¹, Charlie Chen², Krikor Dikranian², Saad Jbabdi¹, Timothy E.J. Behrens¹, David C. Van Essen², Matthew F. Glasser²

Despite the unique information that can be extracted from diffusion-weighted (DW) MRI of the living brain, validation is limited by the inherent difficulties in obtaining ground truths. Therefore, many studies have been recently conducted for developing challenging validation frameworks. Such a validation setup is presented in this abstract. We utilise histological preparation and myelin staining of slices of a macaque brain to map the neuronal fibre organisation. We then use image processing approaches to extract ground truths on certain anatomical features of the underlying fibres. Finally, we compare these features with predictions from model-based analysis of macaque DW-MRI scans.