2007 APR NIH Questions and Answers

In a letter from Grace Peng, dated July 31 2007 the center team asks the following questions:

• 1 The weakest and probably most difficult parts of the NA-MIC effort are validation and comparison across algorithms. The validation that is being performed needs to be more systematic and coordinated like the tractography validation effort. Perhaps methods that engage the user community could be tried. (Ross Whitaker)
• 2 To what problems is DTI best applicable? Is it applicable across age ranges?(Ross Whitaker)
• 3 Although the NA-MIC Wiki contains information on who is using the NA-MIC kit and what are they using it for, the next annual report should either summarize this information or provide a link to the information. (Tina Kapur)
• 4 The next annual report should include a link and reference to the User Manual for the NA-MIC Kit.(Will Schroeder)
• 5 What is the rational for choosing a particular method (tool) for solving a particular problem (DBP)? Why was a particular method (tool) chosen for development? Is there a listing of which tool might be helpful for which family of problems? Please provide more specific details to these questions as they have been asked previously by the Center Team. (Ross Whitaker)
• 6 A clinical project between Toronto and BWH still is recruitment phase in planning a DTI and genetic study of psychosis. What would be the genetic component? (Martha Shenton)
  • Drs. Martha Shenton (BWH) and James Kennedy (University of Toronto) are beginning a collaboration together based on mutual interests, although the specific goals have yet to be worked out. Specifically, Dr. Shenton is very much interested in developing further expertise in her laboratory in the area of genetics, particularly in area of white matter genes and their association with white matter fiber tract abnormalities evaluated using DTI in schizophrenia. Dr. Shenton has an instructor in Psychiatry at BWH who works in her laboratory who will be visiting Dr. Kennedy’s laboratory for a one week period in August of 2007, to be followed by several later visits, to learn state-of-the-art techniques used for evaluating white matter genes and their role in schizophrenia.
  • In parallel, Dr. Kennedy is very much interested in developing further expertise in his laboratory in the area of neuroimaging, particularly in both morphometry and DTI measures of white matter in schizophrenia, which he will correlate with genetic data involving white matter genes. Following up on this interest, Dr. Kennedy has a 4th year resident in psychiatry at the University of Toronto School of Medicine who works in his laboratory and who is visiting Dr. Shenton’s laboratory from July 1, 2007 to December 31, 2007, to learn state-of-the-art neuroimaging techniques including DTI and its application to understanding white matter pathology in schizophrenia. It is too early at this point to determine where this collaboration will go although it is clear that there is a tremendous amount of interest on both Dr. Shenton’s and Dr. Kennedy’s part, and the hope is that these early efforts will come to fruition in a grant that supports this collaborative endeavor.
• 7 The visualization tool allows the overlay of spherical, vector and ellipsoid data onto surfaces via versatile color maps. Is this extensible to other data, such a genetic or molecular data? (Steve Pieper)