A unified framework for clustering and quantitative analysis of white matter fiber tracts. Maddah, M., Grimson, W., Warfield, S., & Wells, W. Med Image Anal, 04, 2008.
abstract   bibtex   
We present a novel approach for joint clustering and point-by-point mapping of white matter fiber pathways. Knowledge of the point correspondence along the fiber pathways is not only necessary for accurate clustering of the trajectories into fiber bundles, but also crucial for any tract-oriented quantitative analysis. We employ an expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm to cluster the trajectories in a gamma mixture model context. The result of clustering is the probabilistic assignment of the fiber trajectories to each cluster, an estimate of the cluster parameters, i.e. spatial mean and variance, and point correspondences. The fiber bundles are modeled by the mean trajectory and its spatial variation. Point-by-point correspondence of the trajectories within a bundle is obtained by constructing a distance map and a label map from each cluster center at every iteration of the EM algorithm. This offers a time-efficient alternative to pairwise curve matching of all trajectories with respect to each cluster center. The proposed method has the potential to benefit from an anatomical atlas of fiber tracts by incorporating it as prior information in the EM algorithm. The algorithm is also capable of handling outliers in a principled way. The presented results confirm the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed framework for quantitative analysis of diffusion tensor MRI.
@Article{RSM:Mad2008,
  Author	= "M. Maddah and W. Grimson and S. Warfield and W. Wells",
  Title		= "A unified framework for clustering and quantitative 
		  analysis of white matter fiber tracts",
  Year		= 2008,
  Month		= 04,
  Abstract	= "We present a novel approach for joint clustering and
                   point-by-point mapping of white matter fiber pathways.
		   Knowledge of the point correspondence along the fiber
		   pathways is not only necessary for accurate  clustering of
		   the trajectories into fiber bundles, but also crucial for
		   any tract-oriented quantitative analysis. We employ an
		   expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm to cluster the
		   trajectories in a gamma mixture model context. The result of
		   clustering is the probabilistic assignment of the fiber
		   trajectories to each cluster, an estimate of the cluster
		   parameters, i.e. spatial mean and variance, and point
		   correspondences. The fiber bundles are modeled by the mean
		   trajectory and its spatial variation. Point-by-point
		   correspondence of the trajectories within a bundle is
		   obtained by constructing a distance map and a label map from
		   each cluster center at every iteration of the EM
		   algorithm. This offers a time-efficient alternative to
		   pairwise curve matching of all trajectories with respect to
		   each cluster center. The proposed method has the potential
		   to benefit from an anatomical atlas of fiber tracts by
		   incorporating it as prior information in the EM
		   algorithm. The algorithm is also capable of handling
		   outliers in a principled way. The presented results confirm
		   the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed framework
		   for quantitative analysis of diffusion tensor MRI.",  
  journal	= "Med Image Anal",
  Pubmed	= "18180197",
  Keywords	= "Projects:DTIModeling",
}

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