Investigating the Role of ICBM-Space Human Brain Diffusion Tensor Templates in Inter-Subject Spatial Normalization

Shengwei Zhang¹, Konstantinos Arfanakis¹

The purpose of this study was to compare the role of the ICBM81 and IIT2 diffusion tensor (DT) templates in inter-subject spatial normalization of DT data with a) minimal and b) visible artifacts, using three different DT registration approaches. First, the registration techniques that result in more accurate DT spatial normalization when registering data with different levels of artifacts to the two templates were determined. It was then shown that, regardless of the artifact content of the DT data, the accuracy of inter-subject spatial normalization increases when using the IIT2 template as a reference instead of the ICBM81 template.