Multi-subject Diffusion Mri Tractography via a Hough Transform Global Approach

Introduction: Multi-subject tractography in Diffusion-Weighted MRI is a valuable technique for statistical analysis of the brain‟s anatomical connectivity and population studies (e.g., Leemans et al. 2006; Voineskos et al. 2008; Jbabdi et al. 2009). Prior approaches are based on the post processing of tractography results from individual subjects, and generally require aligning the tracts and mapping them into a common fiber coordinate system. In this work, we introduce a simultaneous multi-subject tractography technique using high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI). It takes as input a single representative volume, where the HARDI data from all the subjects are non-linearly integrated, and generates population-representative tracts. The tractography algorithm is run only once, and no tract alignment is necessary.