| EPSRC Reference: |
EP/C536851/1 |
| Title: |
Improved brain connectivity measurements using in viro MR diffusion tractography |
| Principal Investigator: |
Clark, Professor CA |
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| Department: |
Institute of Child Health |
| Organisation: |
UCL |
| Scheme: |
Standard Research (Pre-FEC) |
| Starts: |
01 April 2005 |
Ends: |
31 December 2008 |
Value (£): |
206,626
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| EPSRC Research Topic Classifications: |
| Image & Vision Computing |
Med.Instrument.Device& Equip. |
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Summary on Grant Application Form |
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Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can provide remarkable pictures of the human brain, delineating not only its internal structures, but also a number of features of brain physiology. MRI has the important advantage of being entirely non-invasive, with no known biologically hazardous effects. The rapidly developing MRI modality of diffusion imaging offers a unique means of probing the structural arrangement of tissue at the cellular level. This techinque can now be used to map the path of white matter tracts in the brain in vivo non-invasively, using so-called tractography methods. Such techniques open up the possibility of studying the connectivity of the brain in vivo. However, diffusion tractography as currently implemented has a number of major problems, which makes the results obtained unreliable in many cases, limiting their clinically utility. In particular, current methods fail to properly characterise areas with multiple crossing white matter tracts. This proposal addresses key remaining deficiencies of diffusion tractography, with the aim of increasing the accuracy and robustness of this methodology, and with the final objective of allowing the robust assessment of the degree of connection between different areas of the brain. Our approach will result in an integrated acquisition and analysis strategy that will have accepable scan time and computing time to make it clinically usable. In this way, our work will lead to an improvement of MRI diffusion techniques in many areas of neurology, neurosurgery, and cognitive neuroscience, and speed up their translation from research applications to clinical use.
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Key Findings |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Potential use in non-academic contexts |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Impacts |
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| Description |
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk |
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Sectors submitted by the Researcher |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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