What Needs To Be Standardized for Reliable, Reproducible, and Robust Tractography?

Authors

• Jon Haitz Legarreta
• Simona Schiavi
• Wei Tang
• Garrett Banks
• Matthew Cieslak
• Kurt Schilling
• Alberto De Luca
• Jacques-Donald Tournier
• John Kruper
• Francois Rheault
• Stamatios N Sotiropoulos
• Franco Pestilli
• Jelle Veraart
• Joseph Yuan-Mou Yang
• Maxime Descoteaux
• Sarah Heilbronner
• Ariel Rokem

Language

English

Publication Date

1-21-2026

Journal

GigiScience

DOI

10.1093/gigascience/giag034

PMID

41880537

PMCID

PMC13137869

PubMedCentral® Posted Date

3-15-2026

PubMedCentral® Full Text Version

Post-print

Abstract

Tractography is a key component of efforts to map brain connectivity. As a rapidly evolving field of neuroscience, current tractography methods are diverse, often varying across research laboratories and different software pipelines. Therefore, it suffers from a lack of standardization, leading to inconsistencies in results, which can limit reproducibility and affect the robustness needed for research and clinical applications of these methods. Variability in data acquisition procedures, inconsistencies in spatial referencing schemes and implementations, and anatomical heterogeneity-at the individual level, across the lifespan, and across species-hinder comparative analyses. Additionally, the lack of consensus on best practices complicates the development of robust automated quality control pipelines and limits the clinical translation of tractography-based procedures. Establishing standardized protocols for acquisition, preprocessing, and tractography reconstruction is critical toward enabling reliable tract-specific analyses, facilitating cross-study harmonization, and supporting replicable large-scale population studies. The present article provides an overview of the current challenges in tractography standardization and identifies the key aspects that require standardization for reliable, reproducible, and robust tractography.

Keywords

Diffusion Tensor Imaging, Humans, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Reproducibility of Results, Animals, Brain, Software, neuroanatomy, standardization, tractography, brain connectivity, white matter, computational neuroimaging

Published Open-Access

yes

Recommended Citation

Legarreta, Jon Haitz; Schiavi, Simona; Tang, Wei; et al., "What Needs To Be Standardized for Reliable, Reproducible, and Robust Tractography?" (2026). Faculty, Staff and Students Publications. 7314.
https://digitalcommons.library.tmc.edu/baylor_docs/7314