Finding significantly connected voxels based on histograms of connection strengths

Niklas Kasenburg; Morten Vester Pedersen; Sune Darkner

doi:10.1117/12.2216184

21 March 2016 Finding significantly connected voxels based on histograms of connection strengths

Niklas Kasenburg, Morten Vester Pedersen, Sune Darkner

Proceedings Volume 9784, Medical Imaging 2016: Image Processing; 97843I (2016) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2216184
Event: SPIE Medical Imaging, 2016, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

We explore a new approach for structural connectivity based segmentations of subcortical brain regions. Connectivity based segmentations are usually based on fibre connections from a seed region to predefined target regions. We present a method for finding significantly connected voxels based on the distribution of connection strengths. Paths from seed voxels to all voxels in a target region are obtained from a shortest-path tractography. For each seed voxel we approximate the distribution with a histogram of path scores. We hypothesise that the majority of estimated connections are false-positives and that their connection strength is distributed differently from true-positive connections. Therefore, an empirical null-distribution is defined for each target region as the average normalized histogram over all voxels in the seed region. Single histograms are then tested against the corresponding null-distribution and significance is determined using the false discovery rate (FDR). Segmentations are based on significantly connected voxels and their FDR. In this work we focus on the thalamus and the target regions were chosen by dividing the cortex into a prefrontal/temporal zone, motor zone, somatosensory zone and a parieto-occipital zone. The obtained segmentations consistently show a sparse number of significantly connected voxels that are located near the surface of the anterior thalamus over a population of 38 subjects.

Citation Download Citation

Niklas Kasenburg, Morten Vester Pedersen, and Sune Darkner "Finding significantly connected voxels based on histograms of connection strengths", Proc. SPIE 9784, Medical Imaging 2016: Image Processing, 97843I (21 March 2016); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2216184

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available