Multi-level fiber tracking: evaluation on clinical data

Conventional deterministic fiber tractography approaches commonly used in clinical applications are prone to generating false-negative reconstructions, which might influence further decision-making related to treatment and repeated surgery in patients with brain tumors. Surgery-related effects, such as blood inflow into white matter and edema, further distort the diffusion signal, complicating the task of tractography. We evaluated a novel multi-level fiber tractography approach on data of subjects who had undergone tumor resection. A comparison with conventional deterministic approaches is performed. The results were correlated with the reported motor-function deficit grades. ( Abstract #1746)