Michael Wahl1, Yi-Ou Li1, Joshua
Ng1, Sara C. LaHue1, Shelly R. Cooper1,
Elliott H. Sherr2, Pratik Mukherjee1
1Radiology, University of California,
San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States; 2Neurology,
University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States
In
this 3T DTI study of 44 normal adult volunteers, we use quantitative fiber
tracking to demonstrate that specific patterns of microstructural correlation
exist between white matter tracts and may reflect phylogenetic and functional
similarities between tracts.
Inter-tract correlation matrices computed from tract-based measures of
fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity, axial diffusivity, and radial
diffusivity, reveal that there are significant variations in correlations
between tracts for each of these four DTI parameters. Data-driven hierarchical clustering of FA
correlational distances show that neocortical association pathways grouped
separately from limbic association pathways, and that projection pathways
grouped separately from association pathways.