Qiuyun Fan1,
2, Erika Spangler3, Xin Hong4, Ha-Kyu Jeong5,
Nicole Davis2, 6, Laurie E. Cutting2, 3,
Adam W. Anderson1, 2
1Department
of Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United
States; 2Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science,
Nashville, TN, United States; 3Department of Special Education,
Peabody College of Education and Human Development, Nashville, TN, United
States; 4Singapore Bioimaging Consortium, Singapore, Singapore; 5Philips
Healthcare, Korea Basic Science Institute, Cheongwon, Korea; 6Department
of Radiology and Radiological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN,
United States
Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) provides valuable information about neuronal tissues, such as fractional anisotropy (FA), but is limited to single-fiber populations. High angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) methods have been developed to reveal complex white matter structures. The conventional spherical deconvolution approaches do not allow for estimates of fiber-specific response kernels in the case of crossing fibers. The multiple kernel spherical deconvolution (MKSD) method can resolve the orientations of multiple fiber populations and provide estimates of the diffusion properties intrinsic to each fiber. In this work, we developed fiber tracking algorithms based on MKSD fiber orientation distribution functions and studied the stability of the fiber-specific FA estimates obtained.