Assessment of cortico-cortical connectivity in the presence of image artifact

Abstract

Motion artifacts are often seen in diffusion weighted data of patient participants, but less frequently in data of control participants. We investigated the influence of the presence of motion artifact on cortico-cortical tractography streamline number by artificially introducing corrupted slices into the diffusion datasets. We found that as few as 10 slices affected by motion artifact significantly bias streamline number with no pathology present. This study highlights the importance of removing data affected by motion artifact from analysis.