Anatomical accuracy of brain connections derived from diffusion MRI tractography is inherently limited

Tractography based on diffusion-weighted MRI (DWI) is widely used for mapping the structural connections of the human brain. Its accuracy is known to be limited by technical factors affecting in vivo data acquisition, such as noise, artifacts, and data undersampling resulting from scan time constraints. It generally is assumed that improvements in data quality and implementation of sophisticated tractography methods will lead to increasingly accurate maps of human anatomical connections. However, assessing the anatomical accuracy of DWI tractography is difficult because of the lack of independent knowledge of the true anatomical connections in humans. Here we investigate the future prospects of DWI-based…

• UD
  U.S. Department of Defense
• CF
  Center for Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine
• NI
  National Institute of Mental Health
• NI
  National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
• EK
  Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development