2010 Winter Project Week HARDI CONNECTIVITY

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  Projects List

Key Investigators

• UNC-Chapel Hill: Yundi(Wendy) Shi, Deepika Mahalingam, Martin Styner

Objective

We are developing methods to study the connectivity of the developing brain in humans and macaques. The goals for this project week is the development 1) of a visualization strategy of ODF/HARDI information in Slicer (work with Ploy/Verma/Westin) and 2) of a global fiber tractography method using HARDI/ODF information. Longterm goals of the project include application of the tractography results for deformable registration purposes and studying connectivity patterns in brain development.

Approach, Plan

• Compare and select the most appropriate higher order diffusion representation for our human and macaque data from early braindevelopment DWI studies
• Visualization (development/implementation of modules for Slicer3), in collab with Ploy/Verma/Westin
• Fiber tractography and connectivity information analysis

Progress

We have the matlab implementation of various QBall techniques and have applied those techniques to neonatal human data and primate data. We're also learning to use the CAMINO package and its use for our purpose. We just started the development for the global fiber tractography.

References

• P. A. Cook, Y. Bai, S. Nedjati-Gilani, K. K. Seunarine, M. G. Hall, G. J. Parker, D. C. Alexander, Camino: Open-Source Diffusion-MRI Reconstruction and Processing, 14th Scientific Meeting of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, Seattle, WA, USA, p. 2759, May 2006