Tractometer

Description

The Tractometer is a tractography evaluation tool. It is the combination of:

• A choice of bundle segmentation technique (ex, using ROIs or using Recobundles).
• A set of chosen metrics comparing the recovered bundles with “ground truth” bundles.

Usage

The Tractometer can highlight limits of tractography algorithms and contribute to elucidating the open questions in diffusion MRI fiber tracking processing pipelines : from raw data to connectivity analysis. It is used to evaluate the end effects on fiber tracts of various:

• acquisition parameters & artefacts (b-value, number of directions, denoising or not, averaging or not)
• local estimation & modeling techniques (tensor, q-ball, spherical deconvolution, spherical wavelets, compartment models)
• tractography parameters (masking, seeding, stopping criteria)
• tractography algorithms (deterministic, probabilistic, geodesics, global).

Known projects using the Tractometer

1. (2012) The first set of experiments used to produce results for the Tractometer (presented at MICCAI 2012) were based on a revisited FiberCup analysis. It used ROIs to segment streamlines into bundles and score them based on some metrics. Find out more in the Fibercup tab!

2. (2013) The Tractometer was also used to generate results and evaluate the submissions to the 2013 ISBI Hardi reconstruction challenge.

3. (2015) The Tractometer was used to score the ISMRM 2015 tractography challenge. ROI segmentation posed as problematic and a new segmentation process using Recobundles was proposed. Metrics definitions were also updated. Very interesting results were presented in the talk that was given during the Diffusion Study Group session at ISMRM 2015 and led to a strong paper. At the time of writing these lines (2022.08), it already had more than 800 citations. In 2022, a new segmentation process using ROI segmentation was suggested for more stable results. Find out more in the ISMRM2015 tab!

4. (2023) A more reliable alternative scoring system is now offered to score your data based on the ISMRM 2015 Tractography Challenge.

The current goal for the Tractometer is to make it easier for people to submit new phantoms, datasets, tractograms and tractography methods so that better insights can be gained on the current trends.

News

• (2023-03-29) The Excel file and scoring data associated with Renauld2023 have been updated. Small fix.

• (2023-02-09) The ISMRM update paper is now online!

• (2022-11-21) An update of the ISMRM 2015 Tractography Challenge has been submitted for peer-review. Meanwhile, the website has already been updated. Find new data, new scores, new segmentation parameters in the ISMRM 2015 tractography challenge tab.

• (2022-09-08) An example of processed data has been added in the ISMRM 2015 tractography challenge results page. A set of curated ground truth bundles has been added, along with code and ROIs that can be used for segmentation during scoring, in the Tools page.

• (2022-09-08) The new website should now be available again. If you find any broken links and others bugs, don’t hesitate to contact us. Amongst other, many changes were made in the ISMRM 2015 Tractography Challenge tab, visit its home page for more details.

• (2022-08-09) The website is being refactored. ISMRM 2015 results will now be in the format of a downloadable file instead of a dynamic table. Data will be available again soon. Meanwhile, see the Contact and Support section if you need anything.

• (2017-05-15) The scoring system used in the Challenge is now available. See the tools page.