Control Theory and Fast Marching Methods for Brain Connectivity Mapping
Source: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
2006 Feb;.
Author: Prados E, Lenglet C, Pons JP, Faugeras O & Soatto S.
Abstract:
We propose a novel, fast and robust technique for the computation
of anatomical connectivity in the brain. Our approach
exploits the information provided by Diffusion Tensor Magnetic
Resonance Imaging (or DTI) and models the white matter
by using Riemannian geometry and control theory. We
show that it is possible, from a region of interest, to compute
the geodesic distance to any other point and the associated
optimal vector field. The latter can be used to trace shortest
paths coinciding with neural fiber bundles. We also demonstrate
that no explicit computation of those 3D curves is necessary
to assess the degree of connectivity of the region of
interest with the rest of the brain. We finally introduce a general
local connectivity measure whose statistics along the optimal
paths may be used to evaluate the degree of connectivity
of any pair of voxels. All those quantities can be computed
simultaneously in a Fast Marching framework, directly yielding
the connectivity maps. Apart from being extremely fast,
this method has other advantages such as the strict respect of
the convoluted geometry of white matter, the fact that it is
parameter-free, and its robustness to noise. We illustrate our
technique by showing results on real and synthetic datasets.
OurGCM(Geodesic Connectivity Mapping) algorithm is implemented
in C++ and will be soon available on the web.