Seminar - Tract-specific Analysis of Brain White Matter
Date: October 9, 2009
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: Matheson Hall, Room: 109
Speaker(s):
James C. Gee, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Radiologic Science and
Computer and Information Science
Director, HHMI-NIBIB Interfaces Program in Biomedical Imaging and Informational Sciences
Co-Director, Translational Biomedical Imaging Center
University of Pennsylvania, Department of Radiology
Details:
We present a new model-based framework for the statistical analysis of diffusion imaging data associated with specific white matter tracts. The framework takes advantage of the fact that several of the major white matter tracts are thin sheet-like structures that can be effectively modeled by medial representations. The approach involves segmenting major tracts and fitting them with deformable geometric medial models. The medial representation makes it possible to average and combine tensor-based features along directions locally perpendicular to the tracts, thus reducing data dimensionality and accounting for errors in normalization. The framework enables the analysis of individual white matter structures, and provides a range of possibilities for computing statistics and visualizing differences between cohorts.
WATCH WEBCAST
Biosketch:
James C. Gee, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Radiologic Science and Computer and Information Science, Director of the HHMI-NIBIB Interfaces Program in Biomedical Imaging and Informational Sciences, and Co-Director of the Translational Biomedical Imaging Center, all at the University of Pennsylvania. Well known for its contributions to biomedical image analysis, his group, the Penn Image Computing and Science Laboratory (PICSL), conducts basic and applied research in all of the quantitative methods represented in the field, including segmentation, registration, morphometry and shape statistics, with a large number of interdisciplinary collaborations spanning a variety of organ systems and many of the major and emerging modalities in biological/biomaterials imaging and in vivo medical imaging. These collaborative studies apply methods developed at PICSL to quantify the ways in which anatomy can vary in nature, over time, or as a consequence of disease or therapy. These methods aim to improve the detection of subtle changes on imaging studies and thus the specificity and reliability of diagnosis in patients with diseases who exhibit such changes and for whom there are often no known clinical diagnostic procedures. A precise understanding of normal and pathological variations in anatomy is also prerequisite for accurate localization of function that is critical to the success of imaging studies of organ structure-function relationships in health and disease. A primary goal of this research is to translate into practical tools and make freely and publicly available cutting-edge image analysis methods that are essential for extracting the most information from medical imaging data. Dr. Gee’s current work includes applications of image analysis to study the biomechanics of moving organs; the normal development and pathological correlates of brain and lung structure; and the correlation between brain structural changes and cognitive deficits in central nervous system disorders.
Directions:
Matheson Hall is located at 32nd and Market Streets.
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