Detection of fiber pathways

1. A computer-implemented method for detection of fiber pathways comprising:

determining a subset of voxels selected from an input diffusion tensor image by applying a threshold to fractional anisotropy values of the voxels;

determining a cluster of points with collinear diffusion directions;

performing region growth to find seed points in a plane that is normal to the cluster's mean direction, starting from a center of the cluster;

tracing pathways from the seed points;

eliminating voxels of the subset that are close to the pathways using a distance threshold;

displaying a visualization of a selection of voxels used as seed points; and

displaying a visualization of the pathways traced from the seed points.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , further comprising using the pruned subset as a basis for a next iteration comprising:

determining a next cluster of points with collinear diffusion directions;

performing region growth to find seed points in a plane that is normal to the next cluster's mean direction, starting from a center of the next cluster;

tracing pathways from the seed points;

eliminating voxels of the subset that are close to the pathways using the distance threshold; and

displaying a next visualization of a next selection of voxels used as seed points.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein the method iterates for a fixed number of iterations.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein the method iterates until not enough voxels are left to determine a cluster.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein eliminating voxels further comprises:

determining if a voxel belongs to a previously determined pathway; and

eliminating the voxel as a potential seed point for a next clustering iteration upon determining that the voxel belongs to the previously determined pathway.

6. A computer readable medium embodying instructions executable by a processor to perform a method for fiber tracking, the method comprising:

determining a subset of voxels selected from an input diffusion tensor image by applying a threshold to fractional anisotropy values of the voxels;

determining a cluster of points with collinear diffusion directions;

performing region growth to find seed points in a plane that is normal to the cluster's mean direction, starting from a center of the cluster;

tracing pathways from the seed points;

eliminating voxels of the subset that are close to the pathways using a distance threshold;

displaying a visualization of a selection of voxels used as seed points; and

displaying a visualization of the pathways traced from the seed points.

7. The method of claim 6 , further comprising using the pruned subset as a basis for a next iteration comprising:

determining a next cluster of points with collinear diffusion directions;

performing region growth to find seed points in a plane that is normal to the next cluster's mean direction, starting from a center of the next cluster;

tracing pathways from the seed points;

eliminating voxels of the subset that are close to the pathways using the distance threshold; and

displaying a next visualization of a next selection of voxels used as seed points.

8. The method of claim 6 , wherein the method iterates for a fixed number of iterations.

9. The method of claim 6 , wherein the method iterates until not enough voxels are left to determine a cluster.

10. The method of claim 6 , wherein eliminating voxels further comprises:

determining if a voxel belongs to a previously determined pathway; and

eliminating the voxel as a potential seed point for a next clustering iteration upon determining that the voxel belongs to the previously determined pathway.