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  4. Robust Monte-Carlo Simulations in Diffusion-MRI: Effect of the Substrate Complexity and Parameter Choice on the Reproducibility of Results
 
research article

Robust Monte-Carlo Simulations in Diffusion-MRI: Effect of the Substrate Complexity and Parameter Choice on the Reproducibility of Results

Rafael-Patino, Jonathan  
•
Romascano, David  
•
Ramirez-Manzanares, Alonso
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March 10, 2020
Frontiers in Neuroinformatics

Monte-Carlo Diffusion Simulations (MCDS) have been used extensively as a ground truth tool for the validation of microstructure models for Diffusion-Weighted MRI. However, methodological pitfalls in the design of the biomimicking geometrical configurations and the simulation parameters can lead to approximation biases. Such pitfalls affect the reliability of the estimated signal, as well as its validity and reproducibility as ground truth data. In this work, we first present a set of experiments in order to study three critical pitfalls encountered in the design of MCDS in the literature, namely, the number of simulated particles and time steps, simplifications in the intra-axonal substrate representation, and the impact of the substrate's size on the signal stemming from the extra-axonal space. The results obtained show important changes in the simulated signals and the recovered microstructure features when changes in those parameters are introduced. Thereupon, driven by our findings from the first studies, we outline a general framework able to generate complex substrates. We show the framework's capability to overcome the aforementioned simplifications by generating a complex crossing substrate, which preserves the volume in the crossing area and achieves a high packing density. The results presented in this work, along with the simulator developed, pave the way toward more realistic and reproducible Monte-Carlo simulations for Diffusion-Weighted MRI.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.3389/fninf.2020.00008
Author(s)
Rafael-Patino, Jonathan  
•
Romascano, David  
•
Ramirez-Manzanares, Alonso
•
Canales-Rodríguez, Erick Jorge
•
Girard, Gabriel  
•
Thiran, Jean-Philippe  
Date Issued

2020-03-10

Published in
Frontiers in Neuroinformatics
Volume

14

Start page

8

Subjects

diffusion

•

MRI

•

Monte-Carlo

•

simulations

•

microstructure

•

white matter

Note

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LTS5  
FunderGrant Number

FNS

205320_175974

H2020

665667

Other foundations

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

Available on Infoscience
March 10, 2020
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/167152
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