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Morphological Characteristics Analysis of Working Memory Tracts Using BOLD-fMRI and HARDI Based Tractography in Healthy Human Brains

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Bioengineering and Biomedical Signal and Image Processing (BIOMESIP 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNIP,volume 12940))

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Abstract

The neuroimaging field has newly become a drift with multimodal neuroimaging findings to study brain connectivity through the combination of High Angular Resolution Diffusion Imaging (HARDI) based tractography, and functional activation maps using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) task-related. The reconstruction of Working Memory (WM) fibers bundle is an important goal for many clinical applications such as brain tumors, gliomas, traumatic brain injury, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer Disease.

In the present paper, we propose to study the anatomical variability of the WM bundle by focusing on the quantification of the track and testing for correlations with sex and local reconstruction methods.

The dataset used for the experiment is based on in vivo data from the Human Connectome Project (HCP). We used fifty normal volunteers (25 males, 25 females; mean age = 25 ± 2.81 years). We computed the shape similarity, the volume, the mean length, and the number of streamlines, to evaluate the variability of macro structural measures between subjects.

Firstly, this study demonstrates that there is a significant difference between the reconstruction of WM fiber bundle using the Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) model and the High Angular Resolution Diffusion Imaging (HARDI) model, with a mean correlation coefficient r of 0.43 and a p-value of 0.09 for all measured parameters. Also, the WM bundle has a complex architecture with crossing fibers. Therefore, we can conclude that the HARDI model is the most relevant model for the reconstruction of the WM fiber bundle. Secondly, there were a slight sex differences in WM fiber bundles morphology between healthy subjects, with a 0.95 shape similarity average. Finally, we find a slight difference between the measured macrostructural parameters inter-subjects (Normalized Volume, Mean Length of streamlines (MLS), and Number of streamlines). We conclude that the statistical measures show that the MLS is the well-correlated parameter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Tunis El Manar, Higher Institute of Medical Technologies of Tunis, Research Laboratory of Biophysics and Medical Technologies , 1006, Tunis, Tunisia

    Abir Troudi, Ines Ben Alaya & Salam Labidi

Authors
  1. Abir Troudi
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  2. Ines Ben Alaya
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  3. Salam Labidi
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Correspondence to Abir Troudi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Ignacio Rojas

  2. University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Daniel Castillo-Secilla

  3. University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Luis Javier Herrera

  4. Universidad de Granada, Granada, Granada, Spain

    Héctor Pomares

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Troudi, A., Alaya, I.B., Labidi, S. (2021). Morphological Characteristics Analysis of Working Memory Tracts Using BOLD-fMRI and HARDI Based Tractography in Healthy Human Brains. In: Rojas, I., Castillo-Secilla, D., Herrera, L.J., Pomares, H. (eds) Bioengineering and Biomedical Signal and Image Processing. BIOMESIP 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12940. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88163-4_24

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88163-4_24

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