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Updated: Dec 27, 2025
Co-analysis of Brain Structure and Function using fMRI and Diffusion-weighted Imaging
Published on: November 8, 2012
Segmentation of the brain using direction-averaged signal of DWI images
Hu Cheng1, Sharlene Newman1, Maryam Afzali2
1Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA; Program of Neuroscience, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA.
Abstract:
Segmentation of brain tissue in diffusion MRI image space has some unique advantages. A novel segmentation method using the direction-averaged diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) signal is proposed. Two images can be obtained from the fitting of the direction-averaged DWI signal as a function of b-value: one with superior contrast between the gray matter and white matter; one with prominent CSF contrast. A pseudo T1 weighted image can be constructed and standard segmentation tools can be applied. The method was tested on the HCP dataset using SPM12, and showed good agreement with segmentation using the T1 weighted image with the same resolution. The Dice score was all greater than 0.88 for GM or WM with full DWI data and very stable against subsampling of the DWI data in number of diffusion directions, number of shells, and spatial resolution.
