Fig. 1.

Overview of the pipeline for the tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) on the superficial white matter (SWM). a) Seed mask. The seed mask (red) was initially extracted from T1w images and registered to individual FA images by affine transformations (dof 12). b) Exclusion mask. The exclusion mask (blue) was created by registering the JHU-DTI-81 white matter (WM) atlas to individual FA images by the inverse TBSS registration. c) SWM mask. Individual tractography results were registered to the FMRIB58_FA template by the TBSS registration and then averaged across subjects as a population-based map. The SWM mask was created by applying a threshold of 0.5 to the population-based map. d) TBSS. Individual FA images were registered to the FMRIB58_FA template by the TBSS registration. The SWM skeleton (green) was only reconstructed in the SWM defined regions.