Round Table October 15th, 2025 - Application and Translation - 2 of 2

General
1

The IST Application and Translation Network wants to discuss beyond pathways: understanding the functional role of white matter. Comment below to help shape the discussion

  1. Does integrating functional (or other) and structural information aid in interpretation or clinical decision making, or cause uncertainty?

  2. What are some of the issues or challenges you have experienced or that you foresee?

  3. Can you develop a set of recommendations for standardizing their use in neurosurgery, clinical or neuroscientific research?

2

Disclaimer: Humble opinions/suggestions from an early career researcher with limited experience

  1. Integrating other information like metabolic imaging (MRSI,DWI-MRS, PET,CEST etc) for instance, would definitely aid in functional (and dysfunctional) role of white matter in health and disease.
  2. I beleive one of the challenges I could think of would be the base resolution of the additional modality being lower than the dMRI. Any gain achieved via advanced tractography algorithms for better deleniation of the white matter pathways, might not be efficiently translated to the functional/structural/metabolic counterpart for this reason.