Improved reconstruction of crossing fibers in the mouse optic pathways with orientation distribution function fingerprinting

Purpose The accuracy of diffusion MRI tractography reconstruction decreases in the white matter regions with crossing fibers. The optic pathways in rodents provide a challenging structure to test new diffusion tractography approaches because of the small crossing volume within the optic chiasm and the unbalanced 9:1 proportion between the contra‐ and ipsilateral neural projections from the retina to the lateral geniculate nucleus, respectively. Methods Common approaches based on Orientation Distribution Function (ODF) peak finding or statistical inference were compared qualitatively and quantitatively to ODF Fingerprinting (ODF‐FP) for reconstruction of crossing fibers within the optic chiasm using in vivo diffusion MRI (n=18$$ n=18 $$ healthy C57BL/6 mice). Manganese‐Enhanced MRI (MEMRI) was obtained after intravitreal injection of manganese chloride and used as a reference standard for the optic pathway anatomy. Results ODF‐FP outperformed by over 100% all the tested methods in terms of the ratios between the contra‐ and ipsilateral segments of the reconstructed optic pathways as well as the spatial overlap between tractography and MEMRI. Conclusion In this challenging model system, ODF‐Fingerprinting reduced uncertainty of diffusion tractography for complex structural formations of fiber bundles.