Oct

Ron Kikinis visit to The Mind Institute

• Albuquerque, Oct, 26 2006
• The purpose of this visit was to finalize details of the Mind Institute to NA-MIC interactions with the Mind Institute.

Background:

The Mind Institute was established 5 years ago through a congressional budget line item. The institute is housed in the Pete and Nancy Domenici Hall building on the campus of the University of New Mexico. The CEO of the institute is John Rasure (http://www.themindinstitute.org/). John has a background in electrical and software engineering and has both academic and commercial experience. Bruce Rosen in Boston arranged for an initial contact in mid-Feb 2006. Several in-person meetings and phone calls resulted in the selection of the Mind Institute as one of the second generation DBP’s.

Schedule

• 9:00 am Chuck Gasparovic, Ph.D., Department of Neurology and Director, Clinical MR Imaging Core, The MIND Institute
• 9:30 am Jeremy Lawrance, Director, IT Core, The MIND Institute
• 10:00 am Vince Clark, Ph.D., Scientific Director, The MIND Institute
• 10:30 am Chaouki Abdallah, Ph.D., Chair, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
• 11:00 am Cheryl Aine, Ph.D., Department of Radiology and Research Scientist, The MIND Institute
• 11:30 am Juliana Pare-Blagoev, Ph.D., Research Scientist, The MIND Institute
• 12:00 pm Lunch with Chuck Gasparovic, Krastan Blagoev, Ph.D., Physicist, LANL/MIND, Paul Mullins, Ph.D., Department of Neurology and Research Scientist, The MIND Institute
• 1:30 pm Rohit Sood. M.D., Ph.D., Department of Neurology and Director, MRI Facility, BRAIN, Saeid Taheri, Ph.D., Research Scientist, Department of Neurology and BRAIN
• 3:00 pm Arvind Capirhan, Ph.D., Research Scientist, The MIND Institute
• 3:30 pm Mike Weisend, Ph.D., Research Scientist and Director, MEG Core, The MIND Institute
• 4:00 pm Bill Sibbitt, M.D., Professor, Department of Internal Medicine
• 5:15 pm Gary Rosenberg, M.D., Chair, Neurology
• 6:30pm Dinner with Chuck Gasparovic, John Rasure.

Conclusion

• There are several potentially interesting projects that would benefit from access to NA-MIC technology. Of particular interest is the EM-segmenter with its ability to do segmentation in the presence of pathology, in particular hyper- and hypo-intensities. Several of the scientists asked for clarifications about the difference between 3D Slicer and other packages, in particular Freesurfer. Ron explained that the two packages are mostly complementary and that there is a relatively well developed interface between Slicer and Freesurfer. In the context of the meetings during this visit Slicer has strength in dealing with lesions and gross pathology.

• The primary clinical driver for the DBP acitivity will be the Lupus Erythematosus project led by Bill Sibbitt, MD. These patients have a variety of lesions in their brains. Two or more time points will be acquired in most of the patients studied for this grant. The imaging protocol is still being developed but will be kept constant for the duration of the project. This project is funded through NIH (R01HL077422) and will begin data acquisition soon. Dr. Sibbitt will amend the IRB application to allow sharing of the data acquired with the NA-MIC community and, after de-identification, with the research community.