Simulating Neuronal Fiber Bundles for Dt-mri Tractography

Diffusion Tensor MRI (DT-MRI) is a relatively new imaging technique that measures anisotropic diffusion of molecules in biological tissue [1, 2]. This diffusion anisotropy reflects the presence of spatially oriented structures and therefore allows to study in vivo and non-invasively the architecture of axonal fibers in the central nervous system. Several methods have been developed to reconstruct these White Matter (WM) fiber pathways [3]. However, validation of these fiber tracking algorithms remains unsatisfactory due to the lack of a gold standard for comparison. In this work, a DT-MRI phantom is presented that simulates the physical properties of a WM fiber pathway in a natural way. This allows to evaluate the numerous criteria that characterize a tractography algorithm, quantitatively.