Comparing Human White Matter Structure Using Diffusion Tensor I

Purpose Diffusion Tensor (DT) imaging is an emerging magnetic resonance imaging technique based on water diffusion. DT measurements can be used to non-invasively measure white matter structure and trace neural pathways in individual human brains. This technique has proved to be an important tool in localizing white matter abnormalities in several neurological disorders including dyslexia, schizophrenia, and multiple sclerosis. Most previous DT studies of white matter abnormalities have focused on point-wise comparisons of scalar indices derived from the tensor data that may correlate with white matter integrity. Here we present novel methods for comparing the spatial structure of the full tensor data (white matter morphology). We use the technique to compare dyslexic and normal-reading children.