Figure 1.
Trimming of fibers with closest point pairs at fiber endings.
Top: Trimming of overlapping endings according to [47]. Segments between end points and intermediate points are removed (end points to dashed lines). Bottom: Trimming of diverging fibers is avoided with the new approach (end points to dotted lines).
Figure 2.
Axial slices of MRI data in upward order with the Broca and Wernicke speech areas (yellow), fMRI activations (white and yellow) and ventral pathways along the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF) reconstructed by global search (GS) (green). Images show patient (female, 36 years old) with language lateralized to the left hemisphere and with a left temporal astrocytoma (WHO grade II, shown in red).
Figure 3.
Fibers on spiral DTI phantom with signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 30.
Left: GS (green), SP (blue), and TD (red). Right: GS (green), GibbsT (black). Simulated pathway highlighted by the first gradient image (gray).
Figure 4.
Overview of ConProb, fibers of GS, GibbsT, SP and TD for control patient (male, 36 years) with fronto-lateral anaplastic astrocytoma (WHO grade III) in the right hemisphere.
Upper row (sagittal views): Image 1: Connection probability map (low to high probabilities from blue to red), Images 2–4: dorsal and ventral fibers of GS (green), GibbsT (black), and of SP (blue) and TD (red). Lower row: Axial consecutive images (view from top), two for ventral fibers, and two for dorsal fibers. Tumor segmentations rendered in red. fMRI activations in Broca and Wernicke speech areas (yellow). The following Figures 7 to 10 are arranged in the same way.
Figure 5.
Boxplots showing the average of similarity measure in mm for the arcuate fasciculus (AF) (left) and the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF) (right) in the patient and control group for each of the compared pairs of methods.
The numbers N of matching fiber tract pairs are provided in parenthesis. These are reduced compared to the numbers of patients (25) and controls (6) as not all of the reconstructed fibers corresponded to anatomical feasible structures.
Figure 6.
Barplots showing the average fractional anisotropy () of the resulting fiber tracts of each compared pair of methods for the AF (left) and IFOF (right) in the patient and control group.
The numbers N of matching fiber tract pairs are provided in parenthesis. For an explanation of the reduced numbers see Figure 5.
Figure 7.
Patient (male, 38 years) with left fronto-parietal astrocytoma (WHO grade II).
Figure 8.
Patient (female, 48 years) with left frontal anaplastic astrocytoma (WHO grade III).
Figure 9.
Patient (male, 55 years) with left frontal anaplastic oligodendroglioma (WHO grade III).
Figure 10.
Patient (male, 29 years) with diffuse left post-central astrocytoma (WHO grade II).
Figure 11.
Patient (female, 36 years) with left temporal astrocytoma (WHO grade II).
Figure 12.
Patient (female, 59 years) with left temporal anaplastic astrocytoma (WHO grade III).