Mapping of histologically identified long fiber tracts in human cerebral hemispheres to the MRI volume of a reference brain: position and spatial variability of the optic radiation.

The interpretation of the anatomical basis of functional deficits after subcortical infarcts could be considerably improved, if the precise topography and interindividual variability in size and course of long fiber tracts in adult human cerebral hemispheres were available in a spatial reference system. We therefore developed a method enabling the mapping of long fiber tracts to the volume of a standard reference brain. The examined fiber tracts were identified in myelin-stained histological serial sections of 10 human brains. The reference brain is a 3-D reconstruction of in vivo obtained magnetic resonance images (MRIs). The warping of histological volumes with the labeled fiber tracts to the reference brain by means of linear and nonlinear transformation procedures results in population maps that demonstrate the interindividual variability in position, size, and course of fiber tracts. In this paper, we present population maps of the optic radiation and the lateral geniculate body as a first example of this mapping strategy. Both structures present a considerable interindividual variability. Furthermore, voxel-based morphometry shows significant side differences with larger volumes of both structures in the left hemisphere than in the right hemisphere. A more than twofold variability of size in the interhemispheric extension of the optic radiation and the lateral geniculate body is found even after normalization of absolute brain size. Our observations demonstrate that the present approach based on population maps of fiber tracts and nuclei can improve the anatomical localization and interpretation of brain lesions visible in MRIs at the level of microstructurally identified architectonical units.