Novel DT-MRI Analyses of White Matter in Schizophrenia

描述（由申请人提供）：这是一个R 01资助的申请，题为“精神分裂症白色物质的新型DT-MRI分析”。这个为期五年的奖项的目标是应用扩散张量磁共振成像（DT-MRI）和DT-MRI后处理技术评估精神分裂症的白色物质异常的新方法。这项工作建立在我们以前的工作表明，白色物质束可以检测和划定DT-MRI。这些工具将被进一步开发，然后应用于DT-MRI数据，以评估精神分裂症中的白色纤维束异常（即，钩束、胼胝体和扣带束）。本项目的具体目标是：（1）开发和应用新的空间归一化和配准方法;（2）开发和应用基于随机建模的新型3D DT-MRI纤维束成像方法，（3）开发和应用用于将纤维束成像结果分组为解剖学上有意义的白色物质束和ROI的自动化工具，以及（4）通过在白色物质中的扩散的新的定量测量，并比较它们在上述弓形ROI中的平均值，来评估患者群体中的纤维束完整性。虽然这项资助的临床重点是精神分裂症，这项技术将直接适用于其他领域使用的数据从DTI，如早期检测白色物质损伤的婴儿大脑发育，探索和表征白色物质破坏造成的MS病变，并可视化的重要白色物质束在神经外科手术。更重要的是，我们计划通过在开源平台上实现这些工具，使其他研究人员也能使用这些工具。我们相信，后一个目标对于向更大的神经科学界传播分析DT-MRI数据的新技术尤其重要。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This is an application for an R01 grant entitled, "Novel DT-MRI Analyses of White Matter in Schizophrenia". The goal of this five-year award is to apply new approaches for evaluating white matter abnormalities in schizophrenia using Diffusion Tensor Magnetic Resonance Imaging (DT-MRI) and DT-MRI post-processing techniques. This work builds upon our previous work showing that white matter tracts can be detected and delineated with DT-MRI. These tools will be further developed and then applied to DT-MRI data in order to evaluate white matter fiber tract abnormalities in schizophrenia (i.e., uncinate fasciculus, corpus callosum and cingulum bundle). The specific aims of this project are: (1) to developed and apply novel spatial normalization and registration methods; (2) to develop and apply a novel 3D DT-MRI tractography method based on stochastic modeling, (3) to develop and apply automated tools for grouping tractography results into anatomically meaningful white matter bundles and ROIs, and (4) to evaluate fiber tract integrity in a patient population by a lying new quantitative measures of diffusion in white matter, and comparing their mean values in the aforementioned arcellated ROIs. Although the clinical focus of this grant is on schizophrenia, this technology will be directly applicable to other fields using data from DTI, such as for the early detection of white matter damage in the developing infant brain, exploration and characterization of white matter disruptions caused by MS lesions, and visualization of important white matter tracts during neurosurgical procedures. Of further importance, we plan to make these tools available to other researchers by implementing them in an open-source platform. We believe that these latter goals are particularly important for disseminating novel techniques for analyzing DT-MRI data to the larger neuroscience community.