Yu-Chien Wu1, Charles A. Mistretta2,
Andrew L. Alexander3, Trevor Andrews4, Paul J. Whalen5,
James V. Haxby5
1Dartmouth Brain Imaging Center,
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, United States; 2Wisconsin
Institutes for Medical Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison,
WI, United States; 3Medical Physics, University of
Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States; 4College of
Medicine, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, United States; 5Psychological
& Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, United States
High
angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) has drawn considerable attention
for its powerful directional measure on predicting fiber orientation at the
level of subvoxel dimension. HARDI may
improve the accuracy of WM tractography, which leads to an important
application of brain structural connectivity.
However, due to the higher diffusion weighting (DW) b-value and
substantial number of DW directions, its long scan time is often the obstacle
for extensive clinical application. In
this study, we investigate the feasibility of the new reconstruction method,
highly constrained back projection reconstruction, which may significantly
reduce HARDI scan time.