Building a tissue-unbiased brain template of fiber orientation distribution and tractography with multimodal registration

Jinglei Lv; Rui Zeng; Mai Phuong Ho; Arkiev D'Souza; Fernando Calamante

doi:10.1002/mrm.29496

Building a tissue-unbiased brain template of fiber orientation distribution and tractography with multimodal registration

Magn Reson Med. 2023 Mar;89(3):1207-1220. doi: 10.1002/mrm.29496. Epub 2022 Oct 26.

Authors

Jinglei Lv^{1

2}, Rui Zeng^{1

2}, Mai Phuong Ho¹, Arkiev D'Souza^{2

3}, Fernando Calamante^{1

2

4}

Affiliations

¹ School of Biomedical Engineering, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
² Brain and Mind Centre, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
³ Translational Research Collective, Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
⁴ Sydney Imaging, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Abstract

Purpose: Brain templates provide an essential standard space for statistical analysis of brain structure and function. Despite recent advances, diffusion MRI still lacks a template of fiber orientation distribution (FOD) and tractography that is unbiased for both white and gray matter. Therefore, we aim to build up a set of such templates for better white-matter analysis and joint structural and functional analysis.

Methods: We have developed a multimodal registration method to leverage the complementary information captured by T₁ -weighted, T₂ -weighted, and diffusion MRI, so that a coherent transformation is generated to register FODs into a common space and average them into a template. Consequently, the anatomically constrained fiber-tracking method was applied to the FOD template to generate a tractography template. Fiber-centered functional connectivity analysis was then performed as an example of the benefits of such an unbiased template.

Results: Our FOD template preserves fine structural details in white matter and also, importantly, clear folding patterns in the cortex and good contrast in the subcortex. Quantitatively, our templates show better individual-template agreement at the whole-brain scale and segmentation scale. The tractography template aligns well with the gray matter, which led to fiber-centered functional connectivity showing high cross-group consistency.

Conclusion: We have proposed a novel methodology for building a tissue-unbiased FOD and anatomically constrained tractography template based on multimodal registration. Our templates provide a standard space and statistical platform for not only white-matter analysis but also joint structural and functional analysis, therefore filling an important gap in multimodal neuroimage analysis.

Keywords: diffusion MRI; fiber orientation distribution template; joint structural and functional analysis; multimodal analysis; tractogram template.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Algorithms
Brain / diagnostic imaging
Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging / methods
Diffusion Tensor Imaging* / methods
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / methods
White Matter* / diagnostic imaging

Grants and funding

U54 MH091657/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/United States