Charting the Normal Development of Structural Brain Connectivity in Utero using Diffusion MRI

Understanding the structural connectivity of the human brain during fetal life is critical for uncovering the early foundations of neural function and vulnerability to developmental disorders. Diffusion-weighted MRI (dMRI) enables non-invasive mapping of white matter pathways and construction of the brain’s structural connectome, but its application to the fetal brain has been limited by data scarcity and technical difficulties in analyzing fetal dMRI data. Here, we present the largest study to date of in utero brain connectivity, analyzing high-quality dMRI data from 198 fetuses between 22 and 37 gestational weeks, from the Developing Human Connectome Project. We employed advanced fetal-specific tools for brain segmentation, parcellation, and tractography. For connection weighting, we relied on the notion of fiber bundle capacity. We reconstructed individual structural connectomes and characterized the developmental trajectories. Graph-theoretical analysis revealed consistent increases in integration and segregation metrics over gestation, alongside stable small-world properties. Bootstrapping confirmed the robustness of nodal and edge-wise developmental patterns, and a sigmoid growth model identified a narrow time window (around 27.5-30.5 weeks) of rapid connectivity strengthening. Furthermore, we proposed a novel method for constructing age-specific connectome templates based on aggregation of individual subject connectomes. Our analysis shows that this approach is superior to spatial alignment and averaging of the data in image space, with the connectome templates preserving individual topology and supporting accurate age prediction. Together, our findings provide a reasonable normative map of fetal brain structural connectivity and establish a foundation for future studies of atypical development and early indicators of neurological risk.