• Konstantinos Arfanakis, Minzhi Gui, and Mariana Lazar.
• Department of Biomedical Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technology, 10 West 32nd Street, Chicago, IL 60616, USA. arfanakis@iit.edu
• Oncol. Rep. 2006 Jan 1; 15 Spec no.: 1061-4.

AbstractAccurate localization of white matter fiber tracts in relation to brain tumors is a goal of critical importance to the neurosurgical community. White matter fiber tractography by means of diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DTI) is the only non-invasive method that can provide estimates of brain connectivity. However, conventional tractography methods are based on data acquisition techniques that suffer from image distortions and artifacts. Thus, a large percentage of white matter fiber bundles are distorted, and/or terminated early, while others are completely undetected. This severely limits the potential of fiber tractography in pre-surgical planning and image-guided surgery. In contrast, Turboprop-DTI is a technique that provides images with significantly fewer distortions and artifacts than conventional DTI data acquisition methods. The purpose of this study was to evaluate fiber tracking results obtained from Turboprop-DTI data. It was demonstrated that Turboprop may be a more appropriate DTI data acquisition technique for tracing white matter fibers than conventional DTI methods, especially in applications such as pre-surgical planning and image-guided surgery.

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