Tractography of white matter fibers in presence of astrocytoma

Abstract

Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging (dMRI), a technique that maps the axonal microstructure of the brain, is often used nowadays to investigate white matter alterations. Clinicians have gained useful insights from these studies for surgical planning and demonstrating subtle abnormalities in a variety of diseases. Our work aims to identify the effects of astrocytoma, a type of tumor that affects the brain, on white matter (WM) tracts. For this purpose, three patients with different grades of astrocytomas, acquired by the UK Data Archive, are used. Constrained Spherical Deconvolution (CSD)-based deterministic tractography is applied on these datasets in order to assess the tumor-