Legarreta, Jon Haitz.; Schiavi, Simona.; Tang, Wei.; Banks, Garrett.; Cieslak, Matthew.; Schilling, Kurt.; De Luca, Alberto.; Tournier, Jacques-Donald.; Kruper, John.; Rheault, Francois.; Sotiropoulos, Stamatios N.; Pestilli, Franco.; Veraart, Jelle.; Yang, Joseph Yuan-Mou.; Descoteaux, Maxime.; Heilbronner, Sarah.; Rokem, Ariel. (2026).听.听GigaScience, 15.听
Tractography is an important tool for mapping how different parts of the brain are connected. It uses brain imaging data to trace white matter pathways, but because the field is changing quickly, different research groups often use different methods and software. This lack of standardization can lead to inconsistent results, making studies harder to reproduce and limiting use in clinical settings. Differences in how data are collected, how brain images are aligned and processed, and natural anatomical variation between people, age groups, and even species all add to the problem. Another challenge is that there is no broad agreement on the best way to perform tractography, which makes it harder to build reliable automated quality checks and slows clinical translation. This article reviews the main challenges in standardizing tractography and highlights the parts of the process that most need consistent methods so the results can be more reliable, reproducible, and useful across studies and applications.
Figure 1
Summary of main challenges and suggested standardization solutions toward reliable, reproducible, and robust tractography.