2008 Winter Project Week:StochasticTract Arcuate

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Volume rendering of the connectivity map generated using the Stochastic Tractography Filter. Seed region was the inferior frontal gyrus and end region was the temporal lobe (ROIs are shown as wireframes)

Key Investigators

• BWH: Marek Kubicki, Tri Ngo, Doug Markant

Objective

The objective of this project is to use the Stochastic Tractography Filter in Slicer3 in a group comparison of the arcuate fasciculus between healthy controls and chronic schizophrenics.

Approach, Plan

The Stochastic Tractography Filter has been integrated into Slicer3. Our approach is to use ROIs automatically generated from the Freesurfer reconstruction to generate connectivity maps of the arcuate fasciculus in matched groups of healthy controls and chronic schizophrenic patients. We will investigate how best to measure the diffusion properties of the tracts generated by this filter and how to facilitate a group comparison.

It is unclear whether a volumetric or tract-based approach is more appropriate for this kind of statistical analysis. Thus we will be comparing results from both, using statistical metrics such as volume, FA, trace, relative connectivity, etc.

Progress

We found a statistically significant increase in right mean trace in Schizophrenia Group.