Table 8.

Recommendations for measurement methods to evaluate success of tractographic reconstruction.

Purpose of tractography	Population	Method of evaluation	Result	Metric
Create ROI for evaluating diffusion parameters	HC	Compare fiber number L/R or crossing/non-crossing, per subject	Quantitative	Absolute deviation of proportion from 50%
Create ROI for evaluating diffusion parameters	HC/patients	Compare with simple atlas-based ROIs	Quantitative	t test of parameter; null finding indicates tract and atlas-based ROIs equivalent
Create ROI to identify AOP on EPI images	HC/patients	Voxelwise comparison with manually drawn ROIs on EPI images	Quantitative	Value of coefficient (e.g. Dice, NOS)
Create ROI to identify AOP on non-EPI images	HC/patients	Voxelwise comparison with manually drawn ROIs on non-EPI images	Quantitative	Value of coefficient (e.g. Dice, NOS)
Evaluate AOP integrity	HC/patients	Include patients with known compromised integrity in test sample	Quantitative or categorical	Normalized fiber number; success/failure of whole AOP reconstruction
Evaluate AOP displacement	Patients with space-filling lesions	Investigation during surgery	Categorical	Position of AOP relative to lesion, direction of displacement

Abbreviations: AOP - anterior optic pathway; EPI - eco planar imaging; ROI – region of interest.