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Diffusion MRI of the brain enables to quantify white matter fiber orientations noninvasively. Several approaches have been proposed to estimate such characteristics from diffusion MRI data with spherical deconvolution being one of the most widely used methods. Spherical deconvolution requires to define––or derive from the data––a response function, which is used to compute the fiber orientation distribution (FOD). Different characteristics of the response function are expected to affect the FOD computation and the subsequent fiber tracking.

In this work, we explored the effects of inaccuracies in the shape factors of the response function on the FOD characteristics.

With simulations, we show that the apparent fiber density could be doubled in the presence of underestimated shape factors in the response functions, whereas the overestimation of the shape factor will …