NA-MIC Internal Collaborations:DiffusionImageAnalysis

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Diffusion Image Analysis

Tractography Methods

	Corpus Callosum Fiber Tractography The goal of this project is to examine the integrity of fibers in the corpus callosum in patients with schizophrenia and determine whether this is associated with brain activation during memory tasks. More... New: Salat D.H., Lee S.Y., van der Kouwe A.J., Greve D.N., Fischl B., Rosas H.D. Age-associated alterations in cortical gray and white matter signal intensity and gray to white matter contrast. Neuroimage, 2009 Oct 15;48(1):21-8
	DTI Volumetric White Matter Connectivity We have developed a PDE-based approach to white matter connectivity from DTI that is founded on the principal of minimal paths through the tensor volume. Our method computes a volumetric representation of a white matter tract given two endpoint regions. We have also developed statistical methods for quantifying the full tensor data along these pathways, which should be useful in clinical studies using DT-MRI. More...
	Stochastic Tractography This work calculates posterior distributions of white matter fiber tract parameters given diffusion observations in a DWI volume. More...

Clustering and Quantitative Analysis

	Group Analysis of DTI Fiber Tracts Analysis of populations of diffusion images typically requires time-consuming manual segmentation of structures of interest to obtain correspondance for statistics. This project uses non-rigid registration of DTI images to produce a common coordinate system for hypothesis testing of diffusion properties. More... New: Casey B. Goodlett, P. Thomas Fletcher, John H. Gilmore, Guido Gerig. Group Analysis of DTI Fiber Tract Statistics with Application to Neurodevelopment. NeuroImage 45 (1) Supp. 1, 2009. p. S133-S142.
	Fiber Tract Modeling, Clustering, and Quantitative Analysis The goal of this work is to model the shape of the fiber bundles and use this model discription in clustering and statistical analysis of fiber tracts. More... New: Maddah M., Zollei L., Grimson W.E.L., Westin C., Wells III W.M. , A Mathematical Framework for Incorporating Anatomical Knowledge in DT-MRI Analysis . Proceedings of the 5th IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging: From Nano to Macro 2008; 4543943: 105–108.
	DTI Fiber Clustering and Fiber-Based Analysis The goal of this project is to provide structural description of the white matter architecture as a partition into coherent fiber bundles and clusters, and to use these bundles for quantitative measurement. More...
	Fractional Anisotropy in the Uncinate Fasciculus Our objective is to measure the FA in the uncinate fasciculus in patients with schizophrenia. This project is based on the methods published by Kubicki et al. and extends that work by including a bipolar disorder control group, and determining whether there is an association between FA and cognitive functioning and symptoms in the patient groups. More...

Other Diffusion Image Algorithms

	Integrity of Fronto-Temporal Circuitry Our objective is to develop methodology that will permit investigators to specify functional MRI regional of interests (fROI) and determine the optimal white matter pathways between the fROIs based on DTI. More...
	DTI-based Segmentation Unlike conventional MRI, DTI provides adequate contrast to segment the thalamic nuclei, which are gray matter structures. More...
	Influence of Imaging Noise on DTI Statistics Clinical acquisition of diffusion weighted images with high signal to noise ratio remains a challenge. The goal of this project is to understand the impact of MR noise on quantiative statistics of diffusion properties such as anisotropy measures, trace, etc. More...
	Notes on the dicom conversion for DTI data Report about some observation when converting DTI data from dicom to dwi volumes More...

Validation

Contrasting Tractography Measures This project represents a new initiative to build upon a shared vision among Cores 1, 3 and 5 that the field of medical image analysis would be well served by work in the area of validation, calibration and assessment of reliability in DW-MRI image analysis. More... New: S. Pujol, C-F. Westin, R. Whitaker, G. Gerig, T. Fletcher, V. Magnotta, S. Bouix, R. Kikinis, W. M. Wells III, and R. Gollub. Preliminary Results on the use of STAPLE for evaluating DT-MRI tractography in the absence of ground truth. In Proceedings of the 17th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine ISMRM 2009, April 18-24, 2009. Honolulu, Hawaii. ISMRM 2009

DTI Validation To carry out quantitative and qualitative validation of the DTI tractography tools. These will be applied to a limited set of specific tracts in single data sets and single tractography tools, and on several data sets using at least two tractography programs and by investigators in different laboratories. More...