How Well Does the Residual Bootstrap Predict Scan-Rescan Repeatability of Spherical Deconvolution Diffusion MRI?

Jennifer S.W. Campbell¹, Bruce G. Pike²

The purpose of this study was to evaluate how well the residual bootstrap statistical technique predicts the variability in scan-rescan estimates of fibre orientation, using spherical deconvolution diffusion MRI. Here, we evaluated how well the fibre orientations obtained from different, coregistered datasets in the same subject fit the fibre probability distribution function obtained from the residual bootstrap technique. For major fibre tracts (i.e., FA>0.3), the correspondence between the observed variability in the fibre orientations and the variability predicted by the bootstrap was very good. For low FA, the residual bootstrap underestimates the scan-rescan repeatability.