Interactive segmentation of white-matter fibers using a multi-subject atlas

Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2014:2014:2376-9. doi: 10.1109/EMBC.2014.6944099.

Abstract

We present a fast algorithm for automatic segmentation of white matter fibers from tractography datasets based on a multi-subject bundle atlas. We describe a sequential version of the algorithm that runs on a desktop computer CPU, as well as a highly parallel version that uses a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) as an accelerator. Our sequential implementation runs 270 times faster than a C++/Python implementation of a previous algorithm based on the same segmentation method, and 21 times faster than a highly optimized C version of the same previous algorithm. Our parallelized implementation exploits the multiple computation units and memory hierarchy of the GPU to further speed up the algorithm by a factor of 30 with respect to our sequential code. As a result, the time to segment a subject dataset of 800,000 fibers is reduced from more than 2.5 hours in the Python/C++ code, to less than one second in the GPU version.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Computer Graphics
  • Databases as Topic*
  • Humans
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted*
  • Nerve Fibers / physiology*
  • Time Factors
  • White Matter / anatomy & histology*