Optimized methodology for neonatal diffusion tensor imaging processing and study-specific template construction

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has been widely used to study cerebral white matter microstructure in vivo. There is a plethora of open source tools available to perform pre-processing, analysis and template or atlas construction, however very few have been optimized for use with neonatal DTI data. Here we present a fully automated modular pipeline optimized for neonatal DTI data and the construction of study-specific tensor templates. We compare our methodology to an existing one. It is anticipated that the construction of population or study-specific templates will facilitate better group comparisons of neonatal populations both in health and disease.