Method and apparatus for processing diffusion data for identification of white matter tracts in the brain of a patient is provided herein. The method involves, with a processor: generating a connectivity based representation of white matter fibers for multiple different subjects from the connectivity signatures of the fibers from a diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) without using the physical coordinates of the fibers; generating a fiber bundle atlas from the connectivity based fiber representation of (a) which define a model of the human brain; adaptively clustering fibers of a new patient utilizing the fiber bundle atlas of (b) to extract white matter tracts without manual intervention in the form of drawing regions of interest; and presenting the selected white matter tracts and diffusion data in a report or on a display device. This method and apparatus can be used even for patients having edema or brain perturbations.
Automatic tract extraction via atlas based adaptive connectivity-based clustering