Seeing More by Showing Less: Orientation-Dependent Transparency Rendering for Fiber Tractography Visualization

Fiber tractography plays an important role in exploring the architectural organization of fiber trajectories, both in fundamental neuroscience and in clinical applications. With the advent of diffusion MRI (dMRI) approaches that can also model "crossing fibers", the complexity of the fiber...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2015-10, Vol.10 (10), p.e0139434-e0139434
Main Authors: Tax, Chantal M W, Chamberland, Maxime, van Stralen, Marijn, Viergever, Max A, Whittingstall, Kevin, Fortin, David, Descoteaux, Maxime, Leemans, Alexander
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Brain
Brain - physiology
Computer science
Datasets
Dietary fiber
Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods
Diffusion Tensor Imaging - methods
Fibers
Humans
Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted - methods
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted - methods
Imaging, Three-Dimensional - instrumentation
Magnetic resonance imaging
Nerve Fibers, Myelinated - physiology
Nervous system
Neural Pathways - physiology
Neurofibrils
Neurosurgery
NMR
Nuclear magnetic resonance
Nuclear medicine
Opacity
Physiological aspects
Rendering
Structure
Therapeutic applications
Trajectories
Transparency
Visualization
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Summary:Fiber tractography plays an important role in exploring the architectural organization of fiber trajectories, both in fundamental neuroscience and in clinical applications. With the advent of diffusion MRI (dMRI) approaches that can also model "crossing fibers", the complexity of the fiber network as reconstructed with tractography has increased tremendously. Many pathways interdigitate and overlap, which hampers an unequivocal 3D visualization of the network and impedes an efficient study of its organization. We propose a novel fiber tractography visualization approach that interactively and selectively adapts the transparency rendering of fiber trajectories as a function of their orientation to enhance the visibility of the spatial context. More specifically, pathways that are oriented (locally or globally) along a user-specified opacity axis can be made more transparent or opaque. This substantially improves the 3D visualization of the fiber network and the exploration of tissue configurations that would otherwise be largely covered by other pathways. We present examples of fiber bundle extraction and neurosurgical planning cases where the added benefit of our new visualization scheme is demonstrated over conventional fiber visualization approaches.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0139434