Hojjatollah Azadbakht1, 2, Laura M. Parkes1, 2, Hamied A. Haroon1, 2, Mark Augarth3, Nikos K. Logothetis3, Alex de Crespigny4, Helen E. DArceuil4, Geoffrey J M Parker1, 2
1Imaging Science and Biomedical Engineering, School of Cancer and Imaging Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom; 2The Biomedical Imaging Institute, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom; 3Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tubingen, Germany; 4Athinoula A. Martinos Center, MGH, Charlestown, MA, United States
Validation of diffusion imaging has proved difficult due to the lack of an adequate gold-standard. In this work, the macaque visual system is used as a model, in which due to an extensive literature of in-vivo and post-mortem tracer studies, true connections are well-established. We performed probabilistic tractography on diffusion imaging data from two in-vitro macaque brains, and comparisons were made between identified connections at different thresholds of connection strength, and connections identified in the visual system wiring map of Felleman & van Essen. The effects of streamline-length based correction of the distance bias of probabilistic tractography were also explored.