ConFiG: Contextual Fibre Growth

ConFiG is a new numerical phantom generator capable of creating realstic synthetic white matter tissues for diffusion MRI simulation.

ConFiG can achieve the state-of-the-art packing density in complex WM phantoms including up to three crossing bundles of fibres, outperforming the previous state-of-the-art, MEDUSA.

Not only can we generate high density phantoms, but ConFiG phantoms also capture microstructural features found in real axons including fine details like bends and bulges

Moreover, ConFiG captures complex fibre cross-sections that we see in real axons, including axons being deformed around one another and naturally occurring pockets of space between axons

This microstructural realism carries over to the simulated diffusion MRI signal. We show that the simulated signal from ConFiG phantoms made to represent WM regions matches real signal well

We hope to make ConFiG a useful tool for the wider community to validate and develop new microstructure imaging techniques. We’re working on tidying up the code for release – check back here for updates