Test-retest reliability of diffusion measures extracted along white matter language fiber bundles using HARDI-based tractography
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Frontiers in neuroscience ; vol. 12.Publisher(s)
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Abstract(s)
High angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI)-based tractography has been
increasingly used in longitudinal studies on white matter macro- and micro-structural
changes in the language network during language acquisition and in language
impairments. However, test-retest reliability measurements are essential to ascertain that
the longitudinal variations observed are not related to data processing. The aims of this
study were to determine the reproducibility of the reconstruction of major white matter
fiber bundles of the language network using anatomically constrained probabilistic
tractography with constrained spherical deconvolution based on HARDI data, as well as
to assess the test-retest reliability of diffusion measures extracted along them. Eighteen
right-handed participants were scanned twice, one week apart. The arcuate, inferior
longitudinal, inferior fronto-occipital, and uncinate fasciculi were reconstructed in the left
and right hemispheres and the following diffusion measures were extracted along each
tract: fractional anisotropy, mean, axial, and radial diffusivity, number of fiber orientations,
mean length of streamlines, and volume. All fiber bundles showed good morphological
overlap between the two scanning timepoints and the test-retest reliability of all diffusion
measures in most fiber bundles was good to excellent. We thus propose a fairly simple,
but robust, HARDI-based tractography pipeline reliable for the longitudinal study of white
matter language fiber bundles, which increases its potential applicability to research on
the neurobiological mechanisms supporting language.
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