Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Volume 28, Issue 10 , Pages 1507-1513, December 2010

Analyzing diffusion tensor images with ghosting artifacts: the effects of direct and indirect normalization

  • Shan Shen

      Affiliations

    • Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics, University of Reading, RG6 6AL Reading, UK
    • Corresponding Author InformationCorresponding author. Tel.: +44 1183786949.
    • ,
  • Annette Sterr

      Affiliations

    • Department of Psychology, University of Surrey, GU2 7XH Guildford, UK

Received 9 December 2009; received in revised form 23 February 2010; accepted 10 June 2010. published online 13 August 2010.

Abstract 

The current study aims to assess the applicability of direct or indirect normalization for the analysis of fractional anisotropy (FA) maps in the context of diffusion-weighted images (DWIs) contaminated by ghosting artifacts. We found that FA maps acquired by direct normalization showed generally higher anisotropy than indirect normalization, and the disparities were aggravated by the presence of ghosting artifacts in DWIs. The voxel-wise statistical comparisons demonstrated that indirect normalization reduced the influence of artifacts and enhanced the sensitivity of detecting anisotropy differences between groups. This suggested that images contaminated with ghosting artifacts can be sensibly analyzed using indirect normalization.

Keywords: Normalization, Fractional anisotropy, Diffusion tensor imaging, Artifact

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PII: S0730-725X(10)00167-0

doi:10.1016/j.mri.2010.06.010

Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Volume 28, Issue 10 , Pages 1507-1513, December 2010

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