Software for Functionally-Defined Extraction of White Matter [Feedback / Beta Testers Requested!]

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Hi all,

I am excited to present some new software! The FSuB-Extractor (GitHub Repo) is a toolbox one can use to extract and analyze Functional Subcomponents of Bundles. That is, you have an ROI (or two) defined in gray matter (e.g., from an fMRI GLM cluster), and you want to find the white matter that connects the ROI(s) together.

The toolbox mainly uses MRTrix and FreeSurfer tools to project ROIs to the white matter surface and perform streamline matching / generation.

We just released our first alpha release, and are looking for feedback and software testers. We have tested our data on publicly available data (Natural Scenes Dataset) as well as fMRIPrep and QSIPrep outputs, but would appreciate having others users test the toolbox out as well.

More info is listed on the GitHub repo, but please comment here, message me, or raise an issue on the repository with any feedback / issues / questions. We are also preparing a conceptual / technical guide to this method that we hope to have out as a preprint in the next month or two. We welcome contribution from the scientific community as well, and this project will be included in the OHBM 2023 Brainhack.

Thanks!
Steven

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Hi Steben,
This is really a helpful tool! I wonder whether the FSuB-Extractor can do the inverse process? For example, I already get the significant white matter tracts from the comparsion between patients and healthy controls, can I find the brain regions which link by these tracts?

BW,
yuting

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Hi @hyting,

Thanks! Right now we do not do the inverse operation that you describe. But, you can use the tckmap with the end_only argument to find where your streamlines terminate.

Best,
Steven

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