Fig.1. The obtained fronto-pontine tract are overlaid on a FLAIR image with corresponding group-averaged left (b) and right (c) tract-profiles. (a) Yellow binary masks: WMH segmentations. The tracts are passing through WMH. (b,c) The AFD tract profiles (upper) of higher WMH (blue) and MCI (red) groups are statistically significant compared to those of lower WMH group (dark green) at the location of WMH in WMH tract profiles (lower, light green: lower WMH, light blue: higher WMH, magenta: MCI groups). Error bars: S.E.M. Asterisk marks: p < 0.05 (blue: higher WMH, pink: MCI groups).

Fig. 3. The comparisons of the amount of WMH (a), mean AFD (b), and connectivity (c) on tractometry between lower WMH, higher WMH and MCI groups. Differences between groups was statistically significant for each comparison across all groups. (p < 0.0001). The central marks of box plots indicate the median, and the bottom and top edges of the box indicate the 25th and 75th percentiles, respectively. The whiskers extend to the most extreme data points not considered outliers, and the outliers are plotted individually using the '+' symbol