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Edge Detection in Diffusion Weighted MRI Using a Tangent Curve Similarity Metric

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Modeling, Analysis, and Visualization of Anisotropy

Part of the book series: Mathematics and Visualization ((MATHVISUAL))

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Abstract

We present a technique to automatically characterize the geometry of important anatomical structures in diffusion weighted MRI (DWI) data. Our approach is based on the interpretation of diffusion data as a superimposition of multiple line fields that each form a continuum of space filling curves. Using a dense tractography computation, our method quantifies the spatial variations of the geometry of these curves and use the resulting measure to characterize salient structures as edges. Anatomically, these structures have a boundary-like nature and yield a clear picture of major fiber bundles. In particular, the application of our algorithm to high angular resolution imaging (HARDI) data yields a precise geometric description of subtle anatomical configurations associated with the local presence of multiple fiber orientations. We evaluate our technique and study its robustness to noise in the context of a phantom dataset and present results obtained with two diffusion weighted brain images.

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Acknowledgements

This work was made possible in part by a NSF CAREER Program Award No. 1150000: Efficient Structural Analysis of Multivariate Fields for Scalable Visualizations. This support is here gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Zi’Ang Ding & Xavier Tricoche

  2. IBM Research, San Jose, CA, USA

    Yaniv Gur

Authors
  1. Zi’Ang Ding
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  2. Xavier Tricoche
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  3. Yaniv Gur
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xavier Tricoche .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Computer Science, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

    Thomas Schultz

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering (IMT), Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

    Evren Özarslan

  3. Department of Science & Technology, Linköping University, Norrköping, Sweden

    Ingrid Hotz

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Ding, Z., Tricoche, X., Gur, Y. (2017). Edge Detection in Diffusion Weighted MRI Using a Tangent Curve Similarity Metric. In: Schultz, T., Özarslan, E., Hotz, I. (eds) Modeling, Analysis, and Visualization of Anisotropy. Mathematics and Visualization. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61358-1_13

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