Improved reconstruction of crossing fibers in the mouse optic pathways with orientation distribution function fingerprinting

Abstract

Purpose: The accuracy of diffusion MRI tractography reconstruction decreases in the white matter regions with crossing fibers. The optic pathways in rodents provide a challenging structure to test new diffusion tractography approaches because of the small crossing volume within the optic chiasm and the unbalanced 9:1 proportion between the contra- and ipsilateral neural projections from the retina to the lateral geniculate nucleus, respectively.

Methods: Common approaches based on Orientation Distribution Function (ODF) peak finding or statistical inference were compared qualitatively and quantitatively to ODF Fingerprinting (ODF-FP) for reconstruction of crossing fibers within the optic chiasm using in vivo diffusion MRI ( $n=18$ healthy C57BL/6 mice). Manganese-Enhanced MRI (MEMRI) was obtained after intravitreal injection of manganese chloride and used as a reference standard for the optic pathway anatomy.

Results: ODF-FP outperformed by over 100% all the tested methods in terms of the ratios between the contra- and ipsilateral segments of the reconstructed optic pathways as well as the spatial overlap between tractography and MEMRI.

Conclusion: In this challenging model system, ODF-Fingerprinting reduced uncertainty of diffusion tractography for complex structural formations of fiber bundles.

Keywords: manganese-enhanced MRI; mouse optic pathways; orientation distribution function fingerprinting; tractography.