Group-wise consistent fiber clustering based on multimodal connectional and functional profiles

Fiber clustering is an essential step towards brain connectivity modeling and tract-based analysis of white matter integrity via diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in many clinical neuroscience applications. A variety of methods have been developed to cluster fibers based on various types of features such as geometry, anatomy, connection, or function. However, identification of group-wise consistent fiber bundles that are harmonious across multi-modalities is rarely explored yet. This paper proposes a novel hybrid two-stage approach that incorporates connectional and functional features, and identifies group-wise consistent fiber bundles across subjects. In the first stage, based on our recently developed 358 dense and consistent cortical landmarks, we identified consistent backbone bundles with representative fibers. In the second stage, other remaining fibers are then classified into the existing backbone bundles using their correlations of resting state fMRI signals at the two ends of fibers. Our experimental results show that the proposed methods can achieve group-wise consistent fiber bundles with similar shapes and anatomic profiles, as well as strong functional coherences.