On the blurring of the Funk-Radon transform in Q-ball imaging

Abstract

One known issue in Q-Ball imaging is the blurring in the radial integral defining the Orientation Distribution Function of fiber bundles, due to the computation of the Funk-Radon Transform (FRT). Three novel techniques to overcome this problem are presented, all of them based upon different assumptions about the behavior of the attenuation signal outside the sphere densely sampled from HARDI data sets. A systematic study with synthetic data has been carried out to show that the FRT blurring is not as important as the error introduced by some unrealistic assumptions, and only one of the three techniques (the one with the less restrictive assumption) improves the accuracy of Q-Balls. © 2009 Springer-Verlag.