Extracting the inclination angle of nerve fibers within the human brain with 3D-PLI independent of system properties

Julia Reckfort; Hendrik Wiese; Melanie Dohmen; David Grässel; Uwe Pietrzyk; Karl Zilles; Katrin Amunts; Markus Axer

doi:10.1117/12.2023198

27 September 2013 Extracting the inclination angle of nerve fibers within the human brain with 3D-PLI independent of system properties

Julia Reckfort, Hendrik Wiese, Melanie Dohmen, David Grässel, Uwe Pietrzyk, Karl Zilles, Katrin Amunts, Markus Axer

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 8873, Polarization Science and Remote Sensing VI; 88730F (2013) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2023198
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2013, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

The neuroimaging technique 3D-polarized light imaging (3D-PLI) has opened up new avenues to study the complex nerve fiber architecture of the human brain at sub-millimeter spatial resolution. This polarimetry technique is applicable to histological sections of postmortem brains utilizing the birefringence of nerve fibers caused by the regular arrangement of lipids and proteins in the myelin sheaths surrounding axons. 3D-PLI provides a three-dimensional description of the anatomical wiring scheme defined by the in-section direction angle and the out-of-section inclination angle. To date, 3D-PLI is the only available method that allows bridging the microscopic and the macroscopic description of the fiber architecture of the human brain. Here we introduce a new approach to retrieve the inclination angle of the fibers independently of the properties of the used polarimeters. This is relevant because the image resolution and the signal transmission inuence the measured birefringent signal (retardation) significantly. The image resolution was determined using the USAF- 1951 testchart applying the Rayleigh criterion. The signal transmission was measured by elliptical polarizers applying the Michelson contrast and histological slices of the optic tract of a postmortem brain. Based on these results, a modified retardation-inclination transfer function was proposed to extract the fiber inclination. The comparison of the actual and the inclination angles calculated with the theoretically proposed and the modified transfer function revealed a significant improvement in the extraction of the fiber inclinations.

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Julia Reckfort, Hendrik Wiese, Melanie Dohmen, David Grässel, Uwe Pietrzyk, Karl Zilles, Katrin Amunts, and Markus Axer "Extracting the inclination angle of nerve fibers within the human brain with 3D-PLI independent of system properties", Proc. SPIE 8873, Polarization Science and Remote Sensing VI, 88730F (27 September 2013); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2023198

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