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Abstract #1907

Structurally-Informed Tractography: Improved Diffusion MRI Streamlines Tractography Using Anatomical Information

Robert Elton Smith1, 2, Jacques-Donald Tournier1, 2, Fernando Calamante1, 2, Alan Connelly1, 2

1Brain Research Institute, Florey Neuroscience Institutes, Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia; 2Department of Medicine, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia


Diffusion MRI streamlines tractography methods suffer from a range of methodological inadequacies, which can result in differences between fibre-tracking results and the underlying biology. We propose a modular addition to streamlines tractography, which makes effective use of tissue segmentation from an anatomical contrast image, to improve the biological accuracy of the reconstructed connectome. Interestingly, this mechanism improves fibre-tracking results when state-of-the-art diffusion models and tracking algorithms are used, whilst highlighting the inadequacies of inferior models and methods.