Quantitative study of fiber tracking results in human cardiac DTI

Fiber tracking in diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DT-MRI, or DTI) offers a unique and nondestructive technique to obtain the three-dimensional organization of myocardial fibers. This technique is however sensitive to various parameters. In this paper, we present a methodology to get insight into how fiber tracking results vary with different parameters such as anisotropy threshold. The results obtained on human cardiac DTI show that the length and the number of fibers are sensitive to the choices of different parameters such as fractional anisotropy, medium anisotropy and related anisotropy. That would allow the better understanding of diffusion properties, fiber tract geometry, and inherent mechanical activation.