IDENTIFICATION & CHARACTERIZATION OF BRAIN CONNECTIONS

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is a new technique that can reveal formerly inaccessible anatomical information of brain white matter. While it has a great potential as a new diagnostic tool, it suffers from various technical difficulties stemmed from its susceptibility to subject motions and the unique data structures. Therefore, new technical development in terms of data acquisition, processing, and analysis is imperative. The first aim of this project is to develop and apply new data acquisition techniques to improve image resolution and its susceptibility to subjection motions. In the second and third aims, developments of two- and three-dimensional data processing and analysis tools are proposed. In this report year, we successfully implemented a new data acquisition scheme based on parallel imaging, which reduced imaging time and the susceptibility to the subject motion. For brain studies that require high image resolutions, three-dimensional high resolution imaging sequence was developed (Magn. Reson. Med. 47, 837,2002). We developed data processing software with user-friendly interface and disseminated to 11 USA and international research sites. probabilistic map-based DTI analysis software was being studied and the first generation software was developed. In this study, the 3D tensor field of each individual was warped into a standard coordinate to create a statistical map of the white matter architecture. The result was submitted to Magn. Reson. Med. and NeuroImage. We applied the DTI to two different types of brain diseases, namely cancer and holoprosencephaly. The results were published in Annals of Neurology (51, 377, 2002), and Radiology (223,645, 2002), respectively.