Brain shift is the deformation of the brain under the effect of gravity - the whole tissue can displace similar to a gel-like material when changing the orientation of the head. It can significantly affect the outcome of neurosurgery, as targets for deep brain stimulation or biopsy are planned beforehand and leads implanted blindly with the only help of imaging. Information on the potential displacement of these targets is critical.

There is lack of evidence about the early stages of such deformation (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-97150-5): fast 2D MR images depicting the conformation of the tissue have therefore been acquired to capture these first minutes of deformation.

The candidate will develop an analysis pipeline to first rigidly register these images and then extract the deformation field (pixel-wise displacement vectors) through deformable image registration (software already provided).

The ideal candidate should be confident with image processing and visual computing in general (CM2104 Computational Mathematics and CM2208 Scientific Computing), alongside good programming skills (MATLAB or Python).

The student will be offered a desk at the Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), an internationally renown hub for in vivo brain imaging. CUBRIC houses a powerful 7T MR scanner, a 3T Connectom scanner with ultra-high gradients for high-precision microstructural imaging, clinical 3T MR system, as well as advanced MEG and EEG systems.