An interactive triangle-based ODF glyph rendering for high angular resolution diffusion imaging

Abstract

Diffusion magnetic resonance imaging quantifies the diffusion of water molecules. It is unique in showing white matter fiber structures and connectivity in-vivo, relying on the fact that the water molecules’ displacements are more significant along with the fiber orientation than in other directions due to biological barriers. High angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) acquisition enables the differentiation of multiple fiber signals passing through a voxel. Advanced methods for processing diffusion data were developed to synthesize the HARDI data of each voxel into an orientation distribution function (ODF) that relates each direction sample to its probability of water diffusion. Visualizing ODFs through glyphs helps gain insight into the local structure of the brain white matter. Because of the high dimensionality of the data, interactive glyph exploration remains a challenge for a volume containing millions of voxels. This work presents a 3D triangle-based multi-resolution rendering scheme for the ODF glyph. We explored data properties and GPU features to make the triangle-based rendering interactive. Linear performance relative to some fixed-resolution rendered glyphs was assessed using NVIDIA® Nsight Visual StudioTM. A control volume, available in the Retest dataset of the WU-Minn Human Connectome Project, was used to assess the effectiveness of interactive 3D visualization over a multiplanar and curvilinear reformatted volume of ODF glyphs in voxels with multiple fibers, namely the triple crossing at the centrum semiovale, the fanning at the corona radiata, and the crossing of the cingulum and corpus callosum fiber bundles.