单个体素内进入的白质通路的出现率:追踪中的瓶颈问题。

Prevalence of white matter pathways coming into a single white matter voxel orientation: The bottleneck issue in tractography.

机构信息

Department of Radiology & Radiological Science, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, USA.

Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, USA.

出版信息

Hum Brain Mapp. 2022 Mar;43(4):1196-1213. doi: 10.1002/hbm.25697. Epub 2021 Dec 17.

Abstract

Characterizing and understanding the limitations of diffusion MRI fiber tractography is a prerequisite for methodological advances and innovations which will allow these techniques to accurately map the connections of the human brain. The so-called "crossing fiber problem" has received tremendous attention and has continuously triggered the community to develop novel approaches for disentangling distinctly oriented fiber populations. Perhaps an even greater challenge occurs when multiple white matter bundles converge within a single voxel, or throughout a single brain region, and share the same parallel orientation, before diverging and continuing towards their final cortical or sub-cortical terminations. These so-called "bottleneck" regions contribute to the ill-posed nature of the tractography process, and lead to both false positive and false negative estimated connections. Yet, as opposed to the extent of crossing fibers, a thorough characterization of bottleneck regions has not been performed. The aim of this study is to quantify the prevalence of bottleneck regions. To do this, we use diffusion tractography to segment known white matter bundles of the brain, and assign each bundle to voxels they pass through and to specific orientations within those voxels (i.e. fixels). We demonstrate that bottlenecks occur in greater than 50-70% of fixels in the white matter of the human brain. We find that all projection, association, and commissural fibers contribute to, and are affected by, this phenomenon, and show that even regions traditionally considered "single fiber voxels" often contain multiple fiber populations. Together, this study shows that a majority of white matter presents bottlenecks for tractography which may lead to incorrect or erroneous estimates of brain connectivity or quantitative tractography (i.e., tractometry), and underscores the need for a paradigm shift in the process of tractography and bundle segmentation for studying the fiber pathways of the human brain.

摘要

对弥散磁共振成像纤维束追踪技术的特点和局限性进行研究,是推动该技术进步和创新的前提,从而使其能够准确地描绘出人类大脑的连接。所谓的“交叉纤维问题”引起了广泛关注,并不断促使研究人员开发新的方法来分离明显定向的纤维群体。而当多个白质束在单个体素或单个脑区中汇聚,并具有相同的平行方向,然后发散并继续到达最终的皮质或皮质下终点时,可能会面临更大的挑战。这些所谓的“瓶颈”区域导致纤维追踪过程的不适定性,从而导致错误的阳性和阴性估计连接。然而,与交叉纤维的程度相比,对瓶颈区域的彻底描述尚未完成。本研究旨在量化瓶颈区域的出现频率。为此,我们使用弥散张量成像来分割已知的大脑白质束,并将每个束分配给它们穿过的体素以及这些体素内的特定方向(即固定体素)。我们证明,瓶颈出现在人脑白质中超过 50-70%的固定体素中。我们发现,所有的投射、联合和连合纤维都受到了这一现象的影响,并表明即使是传统上被认为是“单纤维体素”的区域,也常常包含多个纤维群体。总之,这项研究表明,大多数白质存在纤维追踪的瓶颈,这可能导致大脑连接或定量纤维追踪(即束追踪)的不正确或错误估计,并强调了在研究人类大脑纤维通路时,需要对纤维追踪和束分割过程进行范式转变。

https://cdn.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/blobs/d439/8837578/0f93f651cd72/HBM-43-1196-g002.jpg

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