DTI-based visualization strategies for the pyramidal tract

With the introduction of diffusion tensor imaging a method became available which is capable to detect major white matter tracts in-vivo. For the visualization of the data several techniques have been developed which, however, show various drawbacks for a comprehensive medical and technical analysis. Although fractional anisotropy maps and streamlines, typically denoted as fiber tracking, are widely used they are suboptimal in several situations of preand intraoperative application. Going beyond these standard approaches, several new and more advanced visualization techniques, namely directional volume growing, hulls and hardware-accelerated glyphs are introduced for an improved exploration of the pyramidal tract. The approaches have been evaluated with respect to diagnosis and therapy planning in neurosurgery. Overall, it is shown that the presented strategies for the visualization of diffusion tensor imaging data are capable to significantly support neurosurgical planning and intervention.