Implementation of diffusions on SE(3) in DIPY and applications in DW-MRI : localization of the optic radiation for epilepsy surgery

In this talk the following topics are discussed: 1) Processing of HARDI data using contextual PDE’s. We demonstrate its potential in crossing-preserving enhancement of ODF/FOD fields where the aim is to enhance the alignment of elongated structures such that crossings are maintained; 2) Cleaning the output of tractography using the fiber to bundle coherence (FBC) measures. FBC provides us with a quantitative measure of fiber alignment and is therefore useful in pruning the results of tractography algorithms by removing spurious fibers that are identified by a low FBC; 3) Application: the optic radiation is reconstructed with probabilistic tractography in support of temporal lobe resective surgery. Parameter estimation is performed to regulate the removal of spurious streamlines near the Meyer’s loop based on the FBC measures, while preserving the anatomically plausible streamlines. Standardized estimation of this parameter is achieved using a test-retest procedure based on the stability of the distance from the Meyer’s loop (ML) to the temporal pole (TP).