XTRACT - Standardised protocols for automated tractography in the human and macaque brain
Shaun Warrington,
Katherine L. Bryant,
Alexandr A. Khrapitchev,
Jerome Sallet,
Marina Charquero-Ballester,
Gwenaëlle Douaud,
Saad Jbabdi,
Rogier B. Mars,
Stamatios N. Sotiropoulos
Affiliations
Shaun Warrington
Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, School of Medicine, University of Nottingham, UK
Katherine L. Bryant
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, & Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, Netherlands; Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, FMRIB Centre, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Alexandr A. Khrapitchev
CRUK and MRC Oxford Institute for Radiation Oncology, Department of Oncology, University of Oxford, UK
Jerome Sallet
Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging - Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, UK; Univ Lyon, Université Lyon 1, Inserm, Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute U1208, Bron, France
Marina Charquero-Ballester
Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, FMRIB Centre, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK; Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, UK
Gwenaëlle Douaud
Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, FMRIB Centre, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Saad Jbabdi
Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, FMRIB Centre, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Rogier B. Mars
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, & Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, Netherlands; Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, FMRIB Centre, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Stamatios N. Sotiropoulos
Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, School of Medicine, University of Nottingham, UK; Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, FMRIB Centre, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK; National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre, Queens Medical Centre, Nottingham, UK; Corresponding author. Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, School of Medicine, University of Nottingham, UK.
We present a new software package with a library of standardised tractography protocols devised for the robust automated extraction of white matter tracts both in the human and the macaque brain. Using in vivo data from the Human Connectome Project (HCP) and the UK Biobank and ex vivo data for the macaque brain datasets, we obtain white matter atlases, as well as atlases for tract endpoints on the white-grey matter boundary, for both species. We illustrate that our protocols are robust against data quality, generalisable across two species and reflect the known anatomy. We further demonstrate that they capture inter-subject variability by preserving tract lateralisation in humans and tract similarities stemming from twinship in the HCP cohort. Our results demonstrate that the presented toolbox will be useful for generating imaging-derived features in large cohorts, and in facilitating comparative neuroanatomy studies. The software, tractography protocols, and atlases are publicly released through FSL, allowing users to define their own tractography protocols in a standardised manner, further contributing to open science.
