Abstract #3165

Nishimura T, Koyamada K, Yamada K, Sakai K

Crossing-fiber problem remains as one of the biggest unsolved issue on diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) based tractography. This problem can be characterized by the following two issues; (a) low fractional anisotropy (FA) voxel causing stopping and/or misdirection of tractography results and (b) undefined structural characteristics of fiber bundles (kissing, crossing, branching, or merging) within the voxel. The former issue (a) corresponds directly to the connectivity of tractography. The latter issue (b) is directly related to the intra-voxel fiber orientation and the relative location of fiber bundles within the voxel. The tensor based algorithm has not yet reached a complete solution to this problem (b). The objective of this paper is to assess whether we are able to solve the crossing fiber problem by higher resolution imaging achieved by tri-linear interpolation of neighbor tensor elements.