Bioinformatics Software for MRI of Brain Development

描述（由申请人提供）：本研究提案是一项修订后的R01申请，以响应项目公告“生物信息学和计算生物学软件的持续开发和维护”，该项目公告提供了五年的资金，以继续开发和维护用于分析早产儿和足月新生儿大脑磁共振图像的现有软件包。由于目前没有适用于该年龄段的替代软件包，因此需要继续开发我们现有的MRI分析工具包。这里提出的研究涉及增强现有的软件包，用于定量分析MRI的发展中的大脑的实施，作为开源软件，现有的验证和证明的算法，并创建一个用户友好的图形用户界面，使最终用户能够轻松地应用这些方法。其目的是增强现有的软件，为科学发现和临床研究创建一个平台。这是一项具有挑战性的任务，因为发育中的新生儿大脑带来了在老年受试者中不明显的独特挑战，包括脑组织的显著年龄依赖性对比度特性、快速的微观结构和宏观结构变化以及接近成像分辨率极限的感兴趣特征的空间分辨率。要圆满地应对这些挑战，需要我们在过去十年中开发的独特专业知识、方法和技术，这些都是目前其他地方无法提供的。影响：该研究团队在获取新生儿大脑图像方面具有重要的国内和国际独特的合作经验，在开发和应用采集后图像处理方面具有开拓性的专业知识，并且在解释新生儿大脑大脑结构改变的性质方面有着广泛的记录。该软件目前有一个重要的用户社区，他们将立即从增强功能中受益。此外，创建一个支持的开源软件包将使更广泛的科学家和临床医生社区处理儿科大脑发育，目前没有任何现有的软件，采用和利用包，并将在儿科神经影像学研究领域产生重大的长期影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This research proposal is a revised R01 application in response to the Program Announcement "Continued Development and Maintenance of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Software" for five years of funding to continue development and maintenance of an existing software package for analysis of magnetic resonance images of the brain of premature and fullterm newborn infants. A significant need exists for continued development of our existing package of MRI analysis tools for this age range as no alternative software packages are currently available or suitable for this age range. The research proposed here involves the enhancement of an existing software package for quantitative analysis of MRI of the developing brain by the implementation, as open-source software, of existing validated and proven algorithms, and the creation of a user-friendly graphical user interface to enable end users to easily apply these methods. The objective is to enhance the existing software to create a platform for scientific discovery and for clinical research. This is a challenging task because the developing newborn brain poses unique challenges not apparent in older subjects, including significant age-dependent contrast properties of brain tissue, rapid microstructural and macrostructural changes, and spatial resolution of features of interest close to the limit of imaging resolution. Addressing these challenges satisfactorily requires the unique expertise and methods and techniques we have developed over the past ten years and which are currently not available elsewhere. Impact: The research team has significant nationally and internationally unique collaborative experience in the acquisition of images of the newborn infant brain, pioneering expertise in the development and application of post-acquisition image processing to this population, and an extensive track record in the interpretation of the nature of alterations of cerebral structure in the newborn infant brain. This software currently has a significant user community who will immediately benefit from the enhancements. Furthermore, creating a supported open source software package will enable the broader community of scientists and clinicians dealing with pediatric brain development, who are currently not served by any existing software, to adopt and utilize the package, and will have a significant long-term impact in the domain of pediatric neuroimaging studies.