Anatomical properties of the arcuate fasciculus predict phonological and reading skills in children.

For more than a century, neurologists have hypothesized that the arcuate fasciculus carries signals that are essential for language function; however, the relevance of the pathway for particular behaviors is highly controversial. The primary objective of this study was to use diffusion tensor imaging to examine the relationship between individual variation in the microstructural properties of arcuate fibers and behavioral measures of language and reading skills. A second objective was to use novel fiber-tracking methods to reassess estimates of arcuate lateralization.

MicroTrack: an algorithm for concurrent projectome and microstructure estimation.

This paper presents MicroTrack, an algorithm that combines global tractography and direct microstructure estimation using diffusion-weighted imaging data. Previous work recovers connectivity via tractography independently from estimating microstructure features, such as axon diameter distribution and density. However, the two estimates have great potential to inform one another given the common assumption that microstructural features remain consistent along fibers.

Identifying the human optic radiation using diffusion imaging and fiber tractography.

Measuring the properties of the white matter pathways from retina to cortex in the living human brain will have many uses for understanding visual performance and guiding clinical treatment. For example, identifying the Meyer's loop portion of the optic radiation (OR) has clinical significance because of the large number of temporal lobe resections. We use diffusion tensor imaging and fiber tractography (DTI-FT) to identify the most likely pathway between the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) and the calcarine sulcus in sixteen hemispheres of eight healthy volunteers.

Think global, act local; projectome estimation with BlueMatter.

Estimating the complete set of white matter fascicles (the projectome) from diffusion data requires evaluating an enormous number of potential pathways; consequently, most algorithms use computationally efficient greedy methods to search for pathways. The limitation of this approach is that critical global parameters--such as data prediction error and white matter volume conservation--are not taken into account. We describe BlueMatter, a parallel algorithm for global projectome evaluation, which uniquely accounts for global prediction error and volume conservation.

ConTrack: finding the most likely pathways between brain regions using diffusion tractography.

Magnetic resonance diffusion-weighted imaging coupled with fiber tractography (DFT) is the only non-invasive method for measuring white matter pathways in the living human brain. DFT is often used to discover new pathways. But there are also many applications, particularly in visual neuroscience, in which we are confident that two brain regions are connected, and we wish to find the most likely pathway forming the connection.

CT colonography: influence of 3D viewing and polyp candidate features on interpretation with computer-aided detection.

Purpose: To retrospectively determine if three-dimensional (3D) viewing improves radiologists' accuracy in classifying true-positive (TP) and false-positive (FP) polyp candidates identified with computer-aided detection (CAD) and to determine candidate polyp features that are associated with classification accuracy, with known polyps serving as the reference standard.

Materials And Methods: Institutional review board approval and informed consent were obtained; this study was HIPAA compliant. Forty-seven computed tomographic (CT) colonography data sets were obtained in 26 men and 10 women (age range, 42-76 years).

Alternative input devices for efficient navigation of large CT angiography data sets.

Purpose: To compare devices for the task of navigating through large computed tomographic (CT) data sets at a picture archiving and communication system workstation.

Materials And Methods: The institutional review board approved this study, and all subjects provided informed consent. Five radiologists were asked to find 25 different vascular targets in three CT angiography data sets (average number of sections, 1025) by using several devices (trackball, tablet, jog-shuttle wheel, and mouse).

Pulmonary nodules on multi-detector row CT scans: performance comparison of radiologists and computer-aided detection.

Purpose: To compare the performance of radiologists and of a computer-aided detection (CAD) algorithm for pulmonary nodule detection on thin-section thoracic computed tomographic (CT) scans.

Materials And Methods: The study was approved by the institutional review board. The requirement of informed consent was waived.