Video: the fibers connecting the left and the right brain.
Demonstration of the VIST/e software package for visualization of tractography from Diffusion Weighted MRI data.  The seedpoints can be interactively set in any plane, and shading with specularity, orientation color coding and shadowing is included. The VIST/e software (with demo datasets included) can be freely downloaded here .

Brain Connectivity Visualization
with
Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI)

One of the challenging topics in medical image analysis, both in terms of complex mathematics and complex visualization, was brain tractography with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), which led to new applications to study and visualize brain connectivity.

Lead by Anna Vilanova, we built a team to focus fully on DTI, with fast and interactive GPU-based visualization, tensor field enhancement, geodesic tracking. PhD students were Vesna Prckovska, Paulo Rodrigues, Neda Sepasian and Tim Peeters. Applications focused on neurosurgery, in particular deep brain stimulation [Brunenberg2012-2015, Plantinga2016-2020] (see a detailed description here) and medio-temporal vision-sparing epilepsy surgery [Tax2014].

Software (free download)

The versitile tractography software VIST/e, fully exploiting GPU processing power, can be downloaded here.

Collaborations / applications

  • Neurosurgery Department of Maastricht University Hospital (for 8 years) on deep brain stimulation and DTI parameter sensitivity visualization. 
  • Epilepsy Center 'Kempenhaeghe' in Heeze on brain connectivity and brain network analysis of epilepsy patients.
  • Máxima Medical Center Veldhoven on peri-natal fiber tracking.
  • Biomedical NMR, TU/e Biomedical Engineering on skeletal and cardiac muscle architecture.

Brain connectivity
visualization

Herfe are some instructive movies on how to use the DTI-Tool: