Bioinformatics Software for MRI of Brain Development

本研究建议是为响应计划公告而修订的R01申请 《生物信息学与计算生物学软件的开发与维护》 继续开发和维护现有的磁场分析软件包的资金 早产儿和足月新生儿脑部的磁共振成像。有很大的需求需要 继续开发我们现有的针对该年龄段的MRI分析工具包，这是别无选择的 目前已有或适用于这一年龄段的软件包。 这里提出的研究涉及到对现有的定量软件包的增强 利用开源软件实现对发育中大脑的磁共振成像分析 和经过验证的算法，以及创建用户友好的图形用户界面，以使最终用户能够 轻松应用这些方法。目标是增强现有软件，为 科学发现和临床研究。这是一项具有挑战性的任务，因为正在发育的新生儿 大脑构成了独特的挑战，在年长的受试者中并不明显，包括显著的年龄相关性对比 脑组织的特性，快速的微观和宏观结构变化，以及空间分辨率 接近成像分辨率极限的感兴趣特征。圆满地应对这些挑战 需要我们在过去十年中开发的独特的专业知识、方法和技术，以及 这是目前在其他地方无法获得的。影响：研究团队在全国范围内具有重要意义 在获取新生儿大脑图像方面具有国际独特的协作体验， 在开发和应用采集后图像处理方面具有开创性的专业知识 人口，并在解释脑部改变的性质方面有广泛的记录 新生婴儿大脑的结构。该软件目前拥有一个重要的用户社区，他们将 立即从这些增强功能中受益。此外，创建受支持的开源软件 一揽子计划将使更广泛的科学家和临床医生能够处理儿科大脑 开发人员，他们目前没有得到任何现有软件的服务，以采用和使用该包，以及 将在儿科神经影像研究领域产生重大的长期影响。

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 softwareto 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 macrostructuralchanges, 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 softwarecurrently 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.