Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is a rapid development technology in recent years of magnetic resonance imaging. The diffusion tensor interpolation is a very important procedure in DTI image processing. The traditional spectral quaternion interpolation method revises the direction of the interpolation tensor and can preserve tensors anisotropy, but the method does not revise the size of tensors. The present study puts forward an improved spectral quaternion interpolation method on the basis of traditional spectral quaternion interpolation. Firstly, we decomposed diffusion tensors with the direction of tensors being represented by quaternion. Then we revised the size and direction of the tensor respectively according to different situations. Finally, we acquired the tensor of interpolation point by calculating the weighted average. We compared the improved method with the spectral quaternion method and the Log-Euclidean method by the simulation data and the real data. The results showed that the improved method could not only keep the monotonicity of the fractional anisotropy (FA) and the determinant of tensors, but also preserve the tensor anisotropy at the same time. In conclusion, the improved method provides a kind of important interpolation method for diffusion tensor image processing.
