ODF-Fingerprinting reconstruction of corticospinal tracts for preoperative planning of brain tumor resection

Motivation: Tractography enables preoperative visualization of major neural pathways altered or displaced by a brain tumor; however, it often fails to reconstruct the cortical terminations of corticospinal tracts due to the complex bending and branching formations of fibers. Goal(s): We aim to improve tracking of corticospinal tracts in their most challenging regions of hand and face projections to the motor cortex. Approach: We refine reconstruction of fibers inside corticospinal tracts by incorporating ODF-Fingerprinting into the tracking pipeline. Results: With ODF-Fingerprinting, we increased the overlap between the reconstructed corticospinal tracts and the cortical regions activated during task-based functional MRI involving hand and face movement. Impact: Our improved reconstruction can help decrease the incidence of postoperative deficits by identifying the structural neural connections that need to be spared during tumor resection.