Tractography is a valuable tool to capture the distribution of white matter tracts in the brain. Its impact in neurosurgery planning is clear, where the least damage to important nerve tract is critical. The technique, although promising and non-invasive, it depends on quality of data and robustness of the modelling: its use in a clinical setting is still limited.
The simplest form of change in anatomy is given by brain shift, the physiological small redistribution of the brain tissues given by a change in head orientation relative to gravity. The small deformation will test the accuracy and reliability of tractographic methods. Methods in tractography can be tested in this scenario by comparing the differences in distribution with the measurements of brain shift made in Zappala et al. (2021, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-97150-5).
The student will have access to MR diffusion weighted data. The first main output of the project will be the preprocessing of the data: this will be done via a consolidated pipeline available in CUBRIC (in-person and video training will be provided). This will give the student an opportunity to appreciate an important part of research on medical imaging: data preparation for the optimal extraction of relevant features from data, input to the subsequent modelling part. The quality of this extracted information greatly impacts the accuracy of the output modelling part.
The second part will be the fitting of a simple model for tractography (deterministic spherical deconvolution) to the diffusion data, a model generally used in a clinical context to the best of the author’s knowledge. The student will use a consolidated pipeline for this REFERENCE? This will be another important learning outcome for the student, as accuracy of the model fitting impacts the high-level information that depicts the phenomenon that is to be captured.
Last part of the project will be the analysis of the obtained results. These will be compared to the deformation of the brain tissue previously captured in Zappala et al., which was captured in the same conditions with structural, rather than diffusion data. The outcome of this last part is the interpretation and discussion of the obtained results, alongside the dissemination of the obtained conclusions.
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.