Henrik Skibbe1, Elias Kellner2, Valerij G Kiselev2, and Marco Reisert2
1Faculty of Informatics, Ishii Lab, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, 2Medical Physics, University Medical Center Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
Tractography based on diffusion-weighted MRI investigates the large scale arrangement of neurite fibers in brain white matter. It is usually assumed that the signal is a convolution of a fiber response function (FRF) with a fiber orientation distribution (FOD). The FOD is the focus of tractography. While in the past the FRF was estimated beforehand and was usually assumed to be fix, more recent approaches estimate the FRF during tractography. This work proposes a novel objective function independent of the FRF, just aiming for FOD reconstruction. The objective is integrated into global tractography showing promising results.
