Michael Bach1,
2, Bram Stieltjes1, Frederik B. Laun, 12,
Alexander Leemans3, Klaus Hermann Fritzsche, 14
1Quantitative
Imaging-based Disease Characterization, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ),
Heidelberg, Germany; 2Dpt. of Medical Physics in Radiology, German
Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany; 3Image
Sciences Institute, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands; 4Medical
Imaging and Biological Informatics, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ),
Heidelberg, Germany
Considering the widespread and growing use of tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS), it is important to fully understand the potential limitations of this approach. In this work the voxels of the cingulum bundle (CB) and corpus callosum (CC) are followed up through the TBSS-process. Our results reveal that CB voxels are assigned to the CC-skeleton and vice versa. This strongly influences the statistical inference, as shown here for a group comparison between 15 Alzheimers diseases patients and 15 healthy controls. In conclusion the potential misassignment of adjacent white matter tracts must be born in mind when interpreting TBBS results.
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