Analysis of the Optic Radiation in the Normal Human Brain

The optic radiation is a dense fiber tract which emerges from the lateral geniculate nucleus and it continues to the occipital visual cortex. Especially, the optic radiation is an important fiber structure that conveys visual information from the lateral geniculate nucleus to the primary visual cortex in the occipital lobe.

Current studies have focused on the anatomical characteristics of optic radiation fiber tracts in individual brains and on comparisons of the anatomical characteristics of the optic radiation fiber tracts between patient and control groups.

Therefore, no diffusion tensor tractography studies of the volumetric information of optic radiation have been conducted without individual brain structure variation. To attain the volumetric information of the optic radiation in normal human brains, Dr. Cheol-Pyo Hong and coworkers from Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) performed diffusion tensor imaging examination in 13 healthy volunteers.

Their results showed that the measured optic radiation fiber tract volume was a range of about 0.16% and that the fractional anisotropy value was about 0.53. Moreover, the optic radiation probability fiber pathway that was determined with diffusion tensor tractography-based group mapping was able to detect the location relatively accurately.

The methods and results from Dr. Cheol-Pyo Hong and coworkers are helpful in the study of optic radiation fiber tract information, which has been reported in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 9, No. 3, 2014).

Source-Eurekalert