Superficial white matter shape characterization using hierarchical clustering and a multi-subject bundle atlas

The description of the superficial white matter (SWM) functional and structural organization is still an unachieved task. In particular, their shape has not been assessed in detail using diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging (dMRI) tractography. This work aims to characterize the different shapes of the short-range association connections present in an SWM multi-subject bundle atlas derived from probabilistic dMRI tractography datasets. First, we calculated a representative centroid shape for each atlas bundle. Next, we computed a distance matrix that encodes the similarity between every pair of centroids. For the distance matrix computation, centroids were first aligned using a streamline-based registration, reducing the 3D spatial separation effect and allowing us to focus only on shape differences. Then, we applied a hierarchical clustering algorithm over the affinity graph derived from the distance matrix. As a result, we obtained ten classes with distinctive shapes, ranging from a straight line form to U and C arrangements. The most predominant shapes were: (i) short open U, (ii) short closed U, and (iii) short C. Moreover, we used the shape information to filter out noisy streamlines in the atlas bundles and applied an automatic segmentation algorithm to 25 subjects of the HCP database. Our results show that the filtering steps help to segment more dense bundles with fewer outliers, improving the identification of the brain’s short fibers.