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

fYear

2010

fDate

14-17 April 2010

Firstpage

1109

Lastpage

1112

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;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Biomedical Imaging: From Nano to Macro, 2010 IEEE International Symposium on

Conference_Location

Rotterdam

ISSN

1945-7928

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-4125-9

Electronic_ISBN

1945-7928

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ISBI.2010.5490187

Filename

5490187