Abstract #3378

Optimized DTI acquisition and tractography pipeline for a reliable reconstruction of the facial nerve in patients with vestibular schwannoma

Manuela Moretto^1,2, Valentina Baro³, Sabrina Brigadoi⁴, Marco Castellaro^1,2, Mariagiulia Anglani⁵, Antonio Mazzoni³, Elisabetta Zanoletti³, Andrea Landi³, Luca Denaro³, Francesco Causin⁵, Domenico D'Avella³, and Alessandra Bertoldo^1,2

¹Padova Neuroscience Center, University of Padova, Padova, Italy, ²Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova, Padova, Italy, ³Department of Neurosciences, University of Padova, Padova, Italy, ⁴Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialisation, University of Padova, Padova, Italy, ⁵Neuroradiology Unit, University of Padova, Padova, Italy

Vestibular schwannomas (VS) are intracranial tumors that can cause the dislocation of the facial nerve (FN). The location of the FN is therefore a priori unknown to the surgeon and this is the main reason why patients with VS may experience FN damage during the surgery, leading to facial paralysis. In this work we used a multi-shell DTI acquisition to perform probabilistic fiber tracking for the preoperative determination of FN course in patients with VS. High-resolution anatomical scans were used to help the fiber tracking algorithm to obtain a reliable reconstruction also when the FN course had a complex configuration.

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