Improving Estimation of Fiber Orientations in Diffusion MRI Using Inter-Subject Information Sharing

Diffusion magnetic resonance imaging is widely used to investigate diffusion patterns of water molecules in the human brain. It provides information that is useful for tracing axonal bundles and inferring brain connectivity. Diffusion axonal tracing, namely tractography, relies on local directional information provided by the orientation distribution functions (ODFs) estimated at each voxel. To accurately estimate ODFs, data of good signal-to-noise ratio and sufficient angular samples are desired. This is however not always available in practice. In this paper, we propose to improve ODF estimation by using inter-subject image correlation. Specifically, we demonstrate that diffusion-weighted images acquired from different subjects can be transformed to the space of a target subject to drastically increase the number of angular samples to improve ODF estimation. This is largely due to the incoherence of the angular samples generated when the diffusion signals are reoriented and warped to the target space. To reorient the diffusion signals, we propose a new spatial normalization method that directly acts on diffusion signals using local affine transforms. Experiments on both synthetic data and real data show that our method can reduce noise-induced artifacts, such as spurious ODF peaks, and yield more coherent orientations

Denoising magnetic resonance images using collaborative non-local means

Noise artifacts in magnetic resonance (MR) images increase the complexity of image processing workflows and decrease the reliability of inferences drawn from the images. It is thus often desirable to remove such artifacts beforehand for more robust and effective quantitative analysis. It is important to preserve the integrity of relevant image information while removing noise in MR images. A variety of approaches have been developed for this purpose, and the non-local means (NLM) filter has been shown to be able to achieve state-of-the-art denoising performance. For effective denoising, NLM relies heavily on the existence of repeating structural patterns, which however might not always be present within a single image. This is especially true when one considers the fact that the human brain is complex and contains a lot of unique structures. In this paper we propose to leverage the repeating structures from multiple images to collaboratively denoise an image. The underlying assumption is that it is more likely to find repeating structures from multiple scans than from a single scan. Specifically, to denoise a target image, multiple images, which may be acquired from different subjects, are spatially aligned to the target image, and an NLM-like block matching is performed on these aligned images with the target image as the reference. This will significantly increase the number of matching structures and thus boost the denoising performance. Experiments on both synthetic and real data show that the proposed approach, collaborative non-local means (CNLM), outperforms the classic NLM and yields results with markedly improved structural details

Non-local robust detection of DTI white matter differences with small databases.

International audienceDiffusion imaging, through the study of water diffusion, allows for the characterization of brain white matter, both at the population and individual level. In recent years, it has been employed to detect brain abnormalities in patients suffering from a disease, e.g., from multiple sclerosis (MS). State-of-the-art methods usually utilize a database of matched (age, sex, ...) controls, registered onto a template, to test for differences in the patient white matter. Such approaches however suffer from two main drawbacks. First, registration algorithms are prone to local errors, thereby degrading the comparison results. Second, the database needs to be large enough to obtain reliable results. However, in medical imaging, such large databases are hardly available. In this paper, we propose a new method that addresses these two issues. It relies on the search for samples in a local neighborhood of each pixel to increase the size of the database. Then, we propose a new test based on these samples to perform a voxelwise comparison of a patient image with respect to a population of controls. We demonstrate on simulated and real MS patient data how such a framework allows for an improve detection power and a better robustness and reproducibility, even with a small database

Diffusion directions imaging (high resolution reconstruction of white matter fascicles from low angular resolution diffusion MRI)

L'objectif de cette thèse est de fournir une chaine de traitement complète pour la reconstruction des faisceaux de la matière blanche à partir d'images pondérées en diffusion caractérisées par une faible résolution angulaire. Cela implique (i) d'inférer en chaque voxel un modèle de diffusion à partir des images de diffusion et (ii) d'accomplir une ''tractographie", i.e., la reconstruction des faisceaux à partir de ces modèles locaux. Notre contribution en modélisation de la diffusion est une nouvelle distribution statistique dont les propriétés sont étudiées en détail. Nous modélisons le phénomène de diffusion par un mélange de telles distributions incluant un outil de sélection de modèle destiné à estimer le nombre de composantes du mélange. Nous montrons que le modèle peut être correctement estimé à partir d'images de diffusion ''single-shell" à faible résolution angulaire et qu'il fournit des biomarqueurs spécifiques pour l'étude des tumeurs. Notre contribution en tractographie est un algorithme qui approxime la distribution des faisceaux émanant d'un voxel donné. Pour cela, nous élaborons un filtre particulaire mieux adapté aux distributions multi-modales que les filtres traditionnels. Pour démontrer l'applicabilité de nos outils en usage clinique, nous avons participé aux trois éditions du MICCAI DTI Tractography challenge visant à reconstruire le faisceau cortico-spinal à partir d'images de diffusion ''single-shell" à faibles résolutions angulaire et spatiale. Les résultats montrent que nos outils permettent de reconstruire toute l'étendue de ce faisceau.The objective of this thesis is to provide a complete pipeline that achieves an accurate reconstruction of the white matter fascicles using clinical diffusion images characterized by a low angular resolution. This involves (i) a diffusion model inferred in each voxel from the diffusion images and (ii) a tractography algorithm fed with these local models to perform the actual reconstruction of fascicles. Our contribution in diffusion modeling is a new statistical distribution, the properties of which are extensively studied. We model the diffusion as a mixture of such distributions, for which we design a model selection tool that estimates the number of mixture components. We show that the model can be accurately estimated from single shell low angular resolution diffusion images and that it provides specific biomarkers for studying tumors. Our contribution in tractography is an algorithm that approximates the distribution of fascicles emanating from a seed voxel. We achieve that by means of a particle filter better adapted to multi-modal distributions than the traditional filters. To demonstrate the clinical applicability of our tools, we participated to all three editions of the MICCAI DTI Tractography challenge aiming at reconstructing the cortico-spinal tract from single-shell low angular and low spatial resolution diffusion images. Results show that our pipeline provides a reconstruction of the full extent of the CST.RENNES1-Bibl. électronique (352382106) / SudocSudocFranceF