Diffusion MRI analysis methods

A common scenario in a diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) study is the comparison of image-driven quantitative parameters between different groups, for example, patients and healthy volunteers, or the association of microstructural properties with clinical or non-imaging data. Due to advances in image processing and the richness of dMRI data, there are numerous methods to perform data analysis with varying levels of localization, and with or without the use of a priori knowledge. Among these dMRI analysis methods, there are different flavors of voxel-wise solutions, atlas-based investigations, which rely on population-based templates and tractography-based methods. In this chapter, several of the most prevalent data analysis methods in dMRI are described.