Diffusion k-tensor estimation from Q-ball imaging using discretized principal axes

Abstract

A reoccurring theme in the diffusion tensor imaging literature is the per-voxel estimation of a symmetric 3 x 3 tensor describing the measured diffusion. In this work we attempt to generalize this approach by calculating 2 or 3 or up to k diffusion tensors for each voxel. We show that our procedure can more accurately describe the diffusion particularly when crossing fibers or fiber-bundles are present in the datasets.