CSD metrics for quality assurance for a large connectomics project

1

Dear MRtrix team,

I would like to kindly ask for advice, but first some introduction.

We would like to use MRtrix for a large connectomics project for which we recently received funding. We are planning to scan about 8 000 healthy subjects with a HARDI protocol (probably multishell acquisition) on the Cima.X scanner, construct the connectome for individual subjects and finally pool the data to create a normal connectome (age, sex dependent).

We are wondering whether some QA would be beneficial for such a project. We have found a phantom - the Anisotropic Diffusion Phantom by PreOperative Performance. It is designed to track DTI metrics (FA, RD, AD, MD).

We are wondering which (MSMT-)CSD metrics we could use additionally. Two come to my mind:

  1. the fiber response function (with voxels selected manually)
  2. the first volume in the FOD image (it is my understanding that this is proportional to the density of the fibers)

My question is: Are there any other metrics we could use?

Thank you very much in advance.

Best regards,

Samuel