Title :
Scalar connectivity measures from fast-marching tractography reveal heritability of white matter architecture
Author :
Patel, Vishal ; Chiang, Ming-Chang ; Thompson, Paul M. ; McMahon, Katie L. ; De Zubicaray, Greig I. ; Martin, Nicholas G. ; Wright, Margaret J. ; Toga, Arthur W.
Author_Institution :
Lab. of Neuro Imaging, Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Abstract :
Recent advances in diffusion-weighted MRI (DWI) have enabled studies of complex white matter tissue architecture in vivo. To date, the underlying influence of genetic and environmental factors in determining central nervous system connectivity has not been widely studied. In this work, we introduce new scalar connectivity measures based on a computationally-efficient fast-marching algorithm for quantitative tractography. We then calculate connectivity maps for a DTI dataset from 92 healthy adult twins and decompose the genetic and environmental contributions to the variance in these metrics using structural equation models. By combining these techniques, we generate the first maps to directly examine genetic and environmental contributions to brain connectivity in humans. Our approach is capable of extracting statistically significant measures of genetic and environmental contributions to neural connectivity.
Keywords :
biological tissues; biomedical MRI; brain; environmental factors; feature extraction; genetics; medical image processing; neurophysiology; physiological models; DTI dataset; central nervous system connectivity; complex white matter tissue architecture; diffusion-weighted MRI; environmental factors; fast-marching tractography; genetic factors; scalar connectivity; structural equation models; Biomedical imaging; Diffusion tensor imaging; Environmental factors; Equations; Genetics; Humans; Image reconstruction; Laboratories; Magnetic resonance imaging; Tensile stress; Magnetic resonance imaging; algorithms; brain; genetics; nervous system;
Conference_Titel :
Biomedical Imaging: From Nano to Macro, 2010 IEEE International Symposium on
Conference_Location :
Rotterdam
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-4125-9
Electronic_ISBN :
1945-7928
DOI :
10.1109/ISBI.2010.5490187
