Maturation of Thalamic Radiations between 34 and 41 Weeks' Gestation: A Combined Voxel-Based Study and Probabilistic Tractography with Diffusion Tensor Imaging

American Journal of Neuroradiology

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Fig 1.
Areas with significant FA increase with age are located in the thalami (A, B), the anterior and posterior arms of the internal capsules, and the optic radiations (C), the centrum semiovale (D), and the subcortical projection pathways of the frontal and parietal cortices (E) in the axial (A–E) and coronal (F) planes. The anatomic underlay is the FA image of the template. The color maps represent the F-scores. Only regions of more than 50 voxels attaining a corrected P value of less than .05 for the voxel-level of statistical inference were considered significant.
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Fig 2.
Regression plots derived from gestational age in relationship to FA values at the most statistically significant voxels located in the CST (F = 59.63), the thalamus (F = 31.23), the STR (F = 30.54), the ATR (F = 29.61), the CR (F = 29.44), and the PTR (F = 25.27) on the right side of the brain. The positive slopes of the regression lines indicate that FA increases with age.
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Fig 3.
Superimposition of statistical parametric maps (red-orange), probabilistic tractography images (blue, green, pink, yellow), and FA images of the template in the axial (A–E) and coronal (F) planes. The CST (green), the STR (blue), the ATR, the PTR (pink), and the CR (yellow) are included in the significant voxels of the parametric analysis.