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Recent Advances in Diffusion MRI

Speaker: Dr Donald Tournier, King’s College London

20TH NOVEMBER 2013, SMALL LECTURE THEATRE, 12.30PM

 

Abstract

 

Diffusion MRI is unique in providing information about the various fibre bundles within brain white matter. With recent advanced in high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI), it is now possible to robustly estimate the orientations and volume fractions of the various fibre bundles present within each individual imaging voxel. This presents new challenges for the analysis of diffusion MRI data, especially at the population level. In response to this, we developed the apparent fibre density framework, which allows the identification of group-wise differences or correlations in the amount of white matter fibres. This is done using an orientation-specific voxel-based analysis, combined with a powerful statistical analysis approach designed to identify extended differences along fibre tracts. This framework has now been used with good results in a number of cohorts (Motor Neurone Disease, Alzheimer's disease, temporal lobe epilepsy, prematurity at birth, amongst others), and is a very promising approach to the group-level analysis of whole-brain diffusion MRI data.

 

Speaker

 

Dr Donald Tournier has recently joined King’s College London from the Florey Institute in Melbourne. He is an expert in the field of diffusion MRI.

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