Chieh-En Tseng1, Yung-Chin Hsu2, Yu-Chun Lo3, Wen-Yih Isaac Tseng3, 4
1Biomedical Imaging and Radiological Sciences, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan; 2Institute of Biomedical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan; 3Center for Optoelectronic Biomedicine, National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan; 4Department of Medical Imaging, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan
We proposed an automatic tract-specific analysis based on a diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI) template. This template-based approach entails transformation of native DSI data to the template, and performs tract-specific analysis on the transformed DSI data. The approach inevitably blurs out the data and may lead to errors in quantitative analysis. To investigate this question, the template-based approach was compared to a native-space approach. Fifteen subjects were analyzed. The results showed that mean generalized fractional anisotropy (GFA) was lower in the template-based approach, but the two approaches showed strong correlation. The results support the use of template-based approach in tract-specific analysis.