Overcoming challenges of the human spinal cord tractography for routine clinical use: a review

Dauleac, Corentin; Frindel, Carole; Mertens, Patrick; Jacquesson, Timothée; Cotton, François

doi:10.1007/s00234-020-02442-8

Cited by 13 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…To the best of our knowledge, comparisons between deterministic and probabilistic approaches for spinal cord tractography are highlighted herein for the first time. As illustrated in a recent review of the literature, 2 the vast majority of studies have used deterministic approaches for spinal cord tractography, but exceptionally probabilistic ones 42 . From our results compared with deterministic approaches, probabilistic tractography provides a worse‐quality tractography rendering.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 77%

“…As several studies have reported, spinal cord tractography is of diagnostic interest for a wide range of pathologies (intramedullary tumor, 3,4 vascular malformations, 5,6 dysraphism, 7 spinal cord injury, 8,9 multiple sclerosis 10,11 ). To date, spinal cord tractography is not used in routine clinical practice because of difficulties in producing a rendering consistent with the anatomical truth 2 . A spinal cord tractography rendering of good quality should allow tracking of fibers along the entire length of the spinal cord (without loss of continuity and premature stopping), with fibers in the craniocaudal direction 2 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To date, spinal cord tractography is not used in routine clinical practice because of difficulties in producing a rendering consistent with the anatomical truth 2 . A spinal cord tractography rendering of good quality should allow tracking of fibers along the entire length of the spinal cord (without loss of continuity and premature stopping), with fibers in the craniocaudal direction 2 . False continuations around the spinal cord should not be present, and the tractography rendering should have the same volumetric characteristics as the spinal cord on the anatomical sequences (T 2 ‐weighted MRI) 12 …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1 Performing spinal cord tractography, which requires extreme precision, is the last step of the DWI processing chain; it results in a long pipeline of data acquisition, processing, and modeling. 2 As several studies have reported, spinal cord tractography is of diagnostic interest for a wide range of pathologies (intramedullary tumor, 3,4 vascular malformations, 5,6 dysraphism, 7 spinal cord injury, 8,9 multiple sclerosis 10,11 ). To date, spinal cord tractography is not used in routine clinical practice because of difficulties in producing a rendering consistent with the anatomical truth.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2 A spinal cord tractography rendering of good quality should allow tracking of fibers along the entire length of the spinal cord (without loss of continuity and premature stopping), with fibers in the craniocaudal direction. 2 False continuations around the spinal cord should not be present, and the tractography rendering should have the same volumetric characteristics as the spinal cord on the anatomical sequences (T 2 -weighted MRI). 12 The obstacles in performing spinal cord tractography are multiple, and some challenges have recently been highlighted.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effect of distortion corrections on the tractography quality in spinal cord diffusion‐weighted imaging

Dauleac

Bannier

Cotton

et al. 2021

Magnetic Resonance in Med

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Purpose To assess the impact of a different distortion correction (DC) method and patient geometry (sagittal balance) on the quality of spinal cord tractography rendering according to different tractography approaches. Methods Forty‐four adults free of spinal cord diseases underwent cervical diffusion‐weighted imaging. The phase‐encoding direction was head→foot. Sequence with opposed polarities (foot→head) was acquired to perform DC. Eddy‐current, motion effects, and susceptibility artifact correction methods were used for DC, and two deterministic and one probabilistic tractography approaches were evaluated using MRtrix and DSI Studio tractography software. Fiber length and number of fibers were extracted to evaluate the quality of the tractography rendering. For each subject, cervical lordosis was measured to assess patient geometry. The angle between the main direction of the spinal cord and the orientation of the acquisition box were computed at each spine level to assess acquisition geometry and define an angle threshold for which a tractography of good quality is no longer possible. Results There was a significant improvement in tractography quality after performing DC with susceptibility artifact correction using a deterministic approach based on tensor. Before DC, the angle threshold was defined at C6 (15.2°) compared with C7 (21.9°) after corrections, demonstrating the importance of spinal cord angulation for DC. Conclusion The impact of DC on tractography quality is greatly impacted by acquisition geometry. To obtain a good‐quality tractography, we propose as a future perspective to adapt the acquisition geometry to that of the patient by automatically adjusting the acquisition box.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 77%