Tracking cerebral white matter pathways from diffusion tensor imaging data: application in patients with brain tumors

The possession of information about the structural organization of brain white matter tracts by the neurosurgical staff taking care of patients with brain tumors can potentially increase the quality of the interventions. We have developed a software system to execute in vivo white matter fiber tractography using three dimensional tensor fields measured by magnetic resonance diffusion tensor imaging (MR-DTI) that can be used in the normal clinical routine workflow, providing neurosurgeons with very important patient data for operation planning and intra-operative navigation in brain tumors.