Characteristics of white matter analysis with different constrained spherical deconvolution in patients with metastatic brain tumors and edema

Motivation: This study compares three constrained spherical deconvolution (CSD) methods (SSST, MSMT, SS3T) for analyzing white matter fiber orientation in patients with metastatic brain tumors and edema. Goal(s): To clarify the characteristics of each CSD analysis within normal white matter and edema. Approach: We compared the macroscopic tissue type maps, apparent fibre density (AFD) and tractography. Results: SS3T-CSD obtained results closer to the ODF of MSMT-CSD than SSST-CSD. AFD showed a tendency for MSMT-CSD to be higher in the white-gray matter boundary region. SS3T-CSD tended to show higher values than MSMT-CSD in edema regions. In tractography, SS3T-CSD showed superior visualization ability in the edema. Impact: SS3T-CSD method, which uses single-shell diffusion-weighted data analysis, has a lower ability to depict the white matter-gray matter boundary area than MSMT-CSD method, which uses multi-shell diffusion-weighted data analysis, but may have better white matter visualization capabilities in edema.