TractEM: Evaluation of protocols for deterministic tractography white matter atlas
Rheault, Francois, Roza G. Bayrak, Xuan Wang, Kurt G. Schilling, Jasmine M. Greer, Colin B. Hansen, Cailey Kerley et al. “TractEM: Evaluation of protocols for deterministic tractography white matter atlas.” Magnetic Resonance Imaging 85 (2022): 44-56.
Abstract
Purpose: One of the key challenges of the manual delineation of white matter pathways is human-rater’s subjectivity in labeling. Clearly communicating the manual processes to capture this information is cumbersome, yet essential to lay a solid foundation for comprehensive atlases. Segmentation protocols must be designed so the interpretation of the requested tasks as well as locating structural landmarks is anatomically accurate, intuitive and reproducible.
Methods: In this work, we quantified the reproducibility of a first iteration of an open/public multi-bundle segmentation protocol. This allowed us to establish a baseline for its reproducibility as well as to identify the limitations for future iterations. The protocol was tested/evaluated on both typical 3 T research acquisition Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA) and high-acquisition quality Human Connectome Project (HCP) datasets.
Results: The results show that a rudimentary protocol can produce acceptable intra-rater and inter-rater reproducibility. However, this work highlights the difficulty in generalizing reproducible results and the importance of reaching a consensus on the anatomical description of white matter pathways.
Conclusions: The protocol has been made available in open source to improve generalizability and reliability in collaboration. The goal is to improve upon the first iteration and initiate a discussion on the anatomical validity (or lack thereof) of some bundle definitions and the importance of reproducibility of tractography segmentation.
