Bootstrap uncertainty estimation of canine cardiac fibers anisotropy and diffusivity on DT-MRI data

Diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DT-MRI) is an emerging technique, which permits one to probe the arrangement of fibrous tissues noninvasively on a microstructural level. Due to the anisotropy nature of water movements in cardiac muscle, one is able to extract local fiber orientations. However, inherent cardiac cycle and respiratory system, signifcantly affect cardiac diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data. As a consequence, considerable distortion of the DTI data leads to ambiguity in the eigenvalues of the diffusion tensors calculation and measures of anisotropy and diffusivity quantification. Our research focused on the investigation of estimation the uncertainty of anisotropy and diffusivity measures of the canine cardiac DTI data. The fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) of the diffusion tensor images are considered depending on basal, mid-cavity, apical, and apex the American Heart Association (AHA) segments.