Comparison between diffusion MRI tractography and histological tract-tracing of cortico-cortical structural connectivity in the ferret brain
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Abstract
The anatomical wiring of the brain is a central focus in network neuroscience. Diffusion MRI tractography offers the unique opportunity to investigate the brain fiber architecture in vivo and noninvasively. However, its reliability is still highly debated. Here, we explored the ability of diffusion MRI tractography to match invasive anatomical tract-tracing connectivity data of the ferret brain. We also investigated the influence of several state-of-the-art tractography algorithms on this match to ground truth connectivity data. Tract-tracing connectivity data were obtained from retrograde tracer injections into the occipital, parietal, and temporal cortices of adult ferrets. We found that the relative densities of projections identified from the anatomical experiments were highly correlated with the estimates from all the studied diffusion tractography algorithms (Spearman’s rho ranging from 0.67 to 0.91), while only small, nonsignificant variations appeared across the tractography algorithms. These results are comparable to findings reported in mouse and monkey, increasing the confidence in diffusion MRI tractography results. Moreover, our results provide insights into the variations of sensitivity and specificity of the tractography algorithms, and hence into the influence of choosing one algorithm over another.
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Animal studies using invasive tract-tracing techniques have shown good agreement between NOS and biological connectivity measured using ex vivo tract-tracing data.
“Several studies conducted on animals using invasive tract-tracing techniques have shown good agreement between the NOS and the biological connectivity as measured using ex vivo tract-tracing data (Delettre et al., 2019; Girard et al., 2020; van den Heuvel et al., 2015a).”
From Quantitative mapping of the brain’s structural connectivity using diffusion MRI tractography: A review (2022) · cites this paper as Delettre et al., 2019
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Tractography-based connectomes are dominated by false-positive connections
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Jeurissen, B., Descoteaux, M., Mori, S., & Leemans, A. (2019) · NMR in Biomedicine · doi:10.1002/nbm.3785 · Cited by 574 · see citing works
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Zhang, F., Daducci, A., He, Y., Schiavi, S., Seguin, C., Smith, R. E., Yeh, C.-H., Zhao, T., & O’Donnell, L. J. (2022) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118870 · Cited by 302 · see citing works
“eral studies conducted on animals using invasive tracttracing techniques have shown good agreement between the NOS and the biological connectivity as measured using ex vivo tracttracing data [218, 129, 184].”
MethodGirard, G., Caminiti, R., Battaglia-Mayer, A., St-Onge, E., Ambrosen, K. S., Eskildsen, S. F., Krug, K., Dyrby, T. B., Descoteaux, M., Thiran, J.-P., et al. (2020) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117201 · Cited by 83 · see citing works
- Authors
- Delettre, C., Messé, A., Dell, L.-A., Foubet, O., Heuer, K., Larrat, B., Meriaux, S., Mangin, J.-F., Reillo, I., de Juan Romero, C., Borrell, V., Toro, R., & Hilgetag, C. C.
- Affiliations
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- Universität Hamburg (DE)
- NeuroSpin, CEA, Paris-Saclay University, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
- Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (ES)
- Developmental Neurobiology Unit, Instituto de Neurociencias, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Universidad Miguel Hernández, Sant Joan d’Alacant, Spain
- Boston University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Hilgetag, Claus C.
- Venue
- Network Neuroscience
- Publisher
- MIT Press
- Published
- 2019-01
- Volume
- 3
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1038-1050
- ISSN
- 2472-1751 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC6777980
- OpenAlex
- W2952553017
- Cited by
- 55
- References
- 7
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 4.63
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Network Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- DIGITAL.CSIC (Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SFB 936/A1/Z3, SPP 2041 / HI 1286/6-1)
- Human Brain Project (HBP-SGA2 (785907)/ SGA2)
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-15-HBPR-0005)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging › Advanced Neuroimaging Techniques and Applications
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Functional Brain Connectivity Studies
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging › Advanced MRI Techniques and Applications
- Keywords
- diffusion MRI tractography, corticocortical connections, retrograde tracing, structural connectivity, occipital cortex, parietal cortex, temporal cortex
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