New Method to Measure Myocardial Tractography Quality
Author Information
Author(s): Mekkaoui Choukri, Huang Shuning, Dai Guangping, Reese Timothy G, Thiagalingham Aravinda, Hoffmann Udo, Jackowski Marcel P, Sosnovik David E
Primary Institution: Harvard Medical School
Hypothesis
To define a robust quantitative parameter to measure physiological variation and experimental error in diffusion MRI tractography datasets of the myocardium.
Conclusion
A new metric (NQE) for quantifying the quality of tractography datasets in the myocardium is introduced, which can differentiate high quality and noisy datasets.
Supporting Evidence
- The NQE values were < 5 when tract length was limited to 50% of the ventricular circumference.
- Noisy and unstable datasets were robustly detected using the NQE analysis.
- The technique was able to differentiate high quality and noisy datasets in all 3 species.
Takeaway
Researchers created a new way to check how good images of heart fibers are, helping to spot bad data easily.
Methodology
Excised human, sheep, and rat hearts were studied using diffusion tensor MRI on a 3.0T scanner, with fiber tracking performed using a fourth-order Runge-Kutta approach.
Participant Demographics
Excised hearts from humans, sheep, and rats.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
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