A robust image analysis pipeline for high fidelity kurtosis and tensor fitting of 1.2mm isotropic infant brain diffusion MRI

High-resolution infant diffusion MRI (dMRI) data poses specific challenges such as severe motion artifacts, long acquisition time for multi-shell data, and low signal-to-noise (SNR). We present a robust image analysis pipeline for high fidelity kurtosis and tensor fitting of 1.2mm isotropic infant brain dMRI that allows us to efficiently analyze in-vivo dMRI data despite the considerable technical challenges specific to infant imaging. State-of-the-art preprocessing including slice-to-volume motion correction and susceptibility-by-movement correction is combined with advanced self-supervised learning-based denoising to produce high fidelity diffusion tensor and diffusion kurtosis fitting.