A Generalized SMT-Based Framework for Diffusion MRI Microstructural Model Estimation

Diusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging (DMRI) has been widely used to characterize the principal directions of white matter bers, also known as ber Orientation Distribution Function (fODF), and ax- onal density in brain tissues. Recently, dierent multi-compartment models have been proposed allow- ing the joint estimation of both the fODF and axonal densities following dierent approaches. In this work, the problem has been cast in a uni- ed framework using the Spherical Mean Technique (SMT), where the presence of multiple compartments is accounted for and the fODF is ex- pressed in a parametric form allowing the estimation of the whole set of parameters. In this formulation, the fODF is expressed by its Spherical Harmonics (SH) representation and dierent multi-compartment models can be easily plugged in, enabling a structured and simple comparison of the respective performance.