A Computational Geometry Approach for Modeling Neuronal Fiber Pathways

• Published in: Lecture notes in computer science Vol. 12908; pp. 175 - 185
• Main Authors: Shailja, S., Zhang, Angela, Manjunath, B. S.
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Springer International Publishing AG 01.01.2021; Springer International Publishing
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Brain fibers; Computational geometry; Computational pathology; Connectome; Reeb graph; Trajectories
• ISBN: 9783030872366; 303087236X
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-87237-3_17

We propose a novel and efficient algorithm to model high-level topological structures of neuronal fibers. Tractography constructs complex neuronal fibers in three dimensions that exhibit the geometry of white matter pathways in the brain. However, most tractography analysis methods are time consuming and intractable. We develop a computational geometry-based tractography representation that aims to simplify the connectivity of white matter fibers. Given the trajectories of neuronal fiber pathways, we model the evolution of trajectories that encodes geometrically significant events and calculate their point correspondence in the 3D brain space. Trajectory inter-distance is used as a parameter to control the granularity of the model that allows local or global representation of the tractogram. Using diffusion MRI data from Alzheimer’s patient study, we extract tractography features from our model for distinguishing the Alzheimer’s subject from the normal control. Software implementation of our algorithm is available on GitHub (https://github.com/UCSB-VRL/ReebGraph).