arXiv · 1709.06122
Fiber-Flux Diffusion Density for White Matter Tracts Analysis: Application to Mild Anomalies Localization in Contact Sports Players
Abstract
We present the concept of fiber-flux density for locally quantifying white matter (WM) fiber bundles. By combining scalar diffusivity measures (e.g., fractional anisotropy) with fiber-flux measurements, we define new local descriptors called Fiber-Flux Diffusion Density (FFDD) vectors. Applying each descriptor throughout fiber bundles allows along-tract coupling of a specific diffusion measure with geometrical properties, such as fiber orientation and coherence. A key step in the proposed framework is the construction of an FFDD dissimilarity measure for sub-voxel alignment of fiber bundles, based on the fast marching method (FMM). The obtained aligned WM tract-profiles enable meaningful inter-subject comparisons and group-wise statistical analysis. We demonstrate our method using two different datasets of contact sports players. Along-tract pairwise comparison as well as group-wise analysis, with respect to non-player healthy controls, reveal significant and spatially-consistent FFDD anomalies. Comparing our method with along-tract FA analysis shows improved sensitivity to subtle structural anomalies in football players over standard FA measurements.
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Itay Benou, Ronel Veksler, Alon Friedman, Tammy Riklin Raviv. 2017-09-18. Fiber-Flux Diffusion Density for White Matter Tracts Analysis: Application to Mild Anomalies Localization in Contact Sports Players. https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.06122
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