The difficult problem in white matter fiber analysis (obtained from DTI or HARDI sources) is to efficiently handle the large volume of fibers. This may be achieved by clustering the fibers, by clustering using approximations such as the Nyström method, by sampling from the data in a fiber bundle or computing representative means as suggested here.
Volume-based methods side-step this issue by treating a white matter structure as a single anatomical unit. With tract-based analysis, however, processing individual fibers is usually a requirement. Tractography and clustering algorithms have made this possible. Improvements are needed but it is my view that making the pre-processing pipeline more efficient is an engineering effort.
While tedious processing is a disadvantage, tract-based methods offer the potential to study local parameters along a tract. This is important in the study of white matter disease
and, at this juncture, it is here that the maximum contributions to the medical community can be made.
References
C. Fowlkes, S. Belongie, F. Chung, J. Malik. "Spectral Grouping Using the Nyström Method", TPAMI. 26 (2) p.214-225.
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