DTI Tractography Challenge Guidelines

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How to participate in the Challenge

To participate to the DTI Tractography Challenge, follow the three steps below

• step 1: download and fill the Letter of Intent for Submission, and send it by email to spujol at bwh.harvard.edu.
• step 2: read the Challenge guidelines
• step 3: upload your results in the indicated format at the location of your choice, and send the url to access them to spujol at bwh.harvard.edu

Anatomical definition of the corticospinal tract

The corticospinal tract is a collection of axons that arise from the cerebral cortex and course through the internal capsule, the cerebral peduncle of the midbrain, the ventral pons, the ventral surface of the medulla, the pyramidal decusssation, and terminate in the spinal cord.

Tumor Segmentation

In each clinical case, the tumor has been segmented using the method [ add ref]. The file patient_xxx-tumor.nhdr & raw is labelmap which contains the segmented structures. Each label map contains two labels: label #1 represents the solid part of the tumor; label #2 represents the cystic part of the tumor.

Submitted Results: File format and naming convention

For each case, the results should be submitted in the following formats: 1) 3D coordinate of the tracts: vtkPolydata ASCII VTK file format; 2) enveloppe of the tracts: ITK-readable Nrrd file format
Naming convention:

• zip archive file: miccaiDTIChallenge_firstAuthorName.zip
• VTK file: firstAuthorName_tract_coordinate.vtk
• Nrrd file: firstAuthorName_tract_enveloppe.nhdr and firstAuthorName_tract_enveloppe.nhdr
• PNG file: firstAuthorName_tract_axialView.png; firstAuthorName_tract_sagittalView.png; firstAuthorName_tract_coronalView.png

Evaluation

• Qualitative Assesment

The evaluation of the tractography results will be based on the following characteristics, and rated from 1 to 5 in each. A perfect score for each characteristic is 5.

• Reproducibility study

For each of the 10 datasets:

1. Anatomical correctness of the right corticospinal tract
2. Presence of false-positive tracts on right side
3. Presence of false-negative tracts on right side
4. Anatomical correctness of the left corticospinal tract
5. Presence of false-positive tracts on left side
6. Presence of false-negative tracts on left side

For all datasets

1. Reproducibility of the tract on the right side
2. Reproducibility of the tract on the left side

• Neurosurgery study

For each clinical case:

1. Anatomical correctness of the tract on lesion side
2. Presence of false-positive tracts on lesion side
3. Presence of false-negative tracts on lesion side
4. Anatomical correctness of the tract on contralateral side
5. Presence of false-positive tracts on contralateral side
6. Presence of false-negative tracts on contralateral side
7. Depiction of the relationship between the tract and the tumor (tract displacement, tumor infiltration

• Quantitative Assesment

A set of 6 metrics will be computed on the tractography results.

1. Dice Coefficient
2. Closest Point Distance
3. Fiber profiles on Fractional Anisotropy (FA)
4. Fiber profiles of Mean Diffusivity (MD)
5. STAPLE sensitivity score
6. STAPLE specificity score