Purpose The structure of fiber tracts in DT-MRI data presents a challenging problem for visualization and analysis. We derive visualization of such traces from a local coherence measure and achieve much improved visual segmentation. Methods We introduce a coherence measure defined for fiber tracts. This quantitative assessment is based on infinitesimal deviations of neighboring tracts and allows identification and segmentation of coherent fiber regions. We use a hardwareaccelerated implementation to achieve interactive visualization on slices and provide several approaches to visualize coherence information. Furthermore, we enhance existing techniques by combining them with coherence. Results We demonstrate our method on both a canine heart, where the myocardial structure is visualized, and a human brain, where we achieve detailed visualization of major and minor fiber bundles in a quality similar to and exceeding fiber clustering approaches. Conclusions Our approach allows detailed and fast visualization of important anatomical structures in DT-MRI data sets.
This local similarity aspect relates to the visualization of fiber tract coherence by Hlawitschka et al. REF who calculate a coherence measure based on the deviation of fiber tracts in small neighborhoods.
Direct visualization of fiber information by coherence
International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery
International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery
Medicine Computer Science