Structural connectivity analysis algorithms for young children's brain
Thanh Vân Phan
Research Seminar in framework of doctoral education
When?
Thursday, 16 November 2017, 14:00-15:00
Abstract
In the research field of developmental neuroscience, an increasing number of studies investigates early childhood as this is the period when drastic structural changes occur in the brain. With the advent of child-friendly scanning protocols, studies based on Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) have started to increase, with the advantage of providing in vivo and non-invasive high-resolution images of the brain. However, it was demonstrated that applying standard MRI software tools on young children data provides inaccurate and biased results, which can lead to erroneous interpretation in the analysis. The aim of this project is to develop and validate a tool for the structural connectivity analysis of young children’s brain. Improved modelling of brain connectivity attempts to better represent the links between brain structures, with accurate segmentation of anatomical brain regions and white matter connections representation. To do so, processing methods based on anatomical and diffusion MRI are adjusted to the young children’s brain. IOptimal pre-processing such as non-linear registration and artefact correction are applied to deal with issue inherent to pediatric data (head motion and anatomical disparity). Age-specific atlases are used (or constructed, if not available) in order to summarise the brain anatomy specific to each age group. Multi-atlas based methods are used in order to improve the segmentation accuracy of multiple labelling of brain sub-regions. Finally, longitudinal design is also included so changes in both micro- and macrostructure can be measured during brain development. Studies are conducted to evaluate the impact of these adapted processing methods applied for brain structural connectivity analysis in young children’s brain in typical and atypical development.
Where?
Seminar room 04.227 (HP2)
O&N II - KU Leuven
Herestraat 49
B-3000 Leuven
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