@article{PalmAxerGraesseletal., author = {Palm, Christoph and Axer, Markus and Gr{\"a}ßel, David and Dammers, J{\"u}rgen and Lindemeyer, Johannes and Zilles, Karl and Pietrzyk, Uwe and Amunts, Katrin}, title = {Towards ultra-high resolution fibre tract mapping of the human brain}, series = {Frontiers in Human Neuroscience}, volume = {4}, journal = {Frontiers in Human Neuroscience}, doi = {10.3389/neuro.09.009.2010}, pages = {9}, abstract = {Polarised light imaging (PLI) utilises the birefringence of the myelin sheaths in order to visualise the orientation of nerve fibres in microtome sections of adult human post-mortem brains at ultra-high spatial resolution. The preparation of post-mortem brains for PLI involves fixation, freezing and cutting into 100-μm-thick sections. Hence, geometrical distortions of histological sections are inevitable and have to be removed for 3D reconstruction and subsequent fibre tracking. We here present a processing pipeline for 3D reconstruction of these sections using PLI derived multimodal images of post-mortem brains. Blockface images of the brains were obtained during cutting; they serve as reference data for alignment and elimination of distortion artefacts. In addition to the spatial image transformation, fibre orientation vectors were reoriented using the transformation fields, which consider both affine and subsequent non-linear registration. The application of this registration and reorientation approach results in a smooth fibre vector field, which reflects brain morphology. PLI combined with 3D reconstruction and fibre tracking is a powerful tool for human brain mapping. It can also serve as an independent method for evaluating in vivo fibre tractography.}, subject = {Bildgebendes Verfahren}, language = {en} } @article{DammersAxerGraesseletal., author = {Dammers, J{\"u}rgen and Axer, Markus and Gr{\"a}ßel, David and Palm, Christoph and Zilles, Karl and Amunts, Katrin and Pietrzyk, Uwe}, title = {Signal enhancement in polarized light imaging by means of independent component analysis}, series = {NeuroImage}, volume = {49}, journal = {NeuroImage}, number = {2}, publisher = {Elsevier}, doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.08.059}, pages = {1241 -- 1248}, abstract = {Polarized light imaging (PLI) enables the evaluation of fiber orientations in histological sections of human postmortem brains, with ultra-high spatial resolution. PLI is based on the birefringent properties of the myelin sheath of nerve fibers. As a result, the polarization state of light propagating through a rotating polarimeter is changed in such a way that the detected signal at each measurement unit of a charged-coupled device (CCD) camera describes a sinusoidal signal. Vectors of the fiber orientation defined by inclination and direction angles can then directly be derived from the optical signals employing PLI analysis. However, noise, light scatter and filter inhomogeneities interfere with the original sinusoidal PLI signals. We here introduce a novel method using independent component analysis (ICA) to decompose the PLI images into statistically independent component maps. After decomposition, gray and white matter structures can clearly be distinguished from noise and other artifacts. The signal enhancement after artifact rejection is quantitatively evaluated in 134 histological whole brain sections. Thus, the primary sinusoidal signals from polarized light imaging can be effectively restored after noise and artifact rejection utilizing ICA. Our method therefore contributes to the analysis of nerve fiber orientation in the human brain within a micrometer scale.}, subject = {Bildgebendes Verfahren}, language = {en} }