Thursday February 07 2008
CEA
Instant diagnosis using diffusion MRI
Med Image Comput Comput Assist Interv Int Conf Med Image Comput Comput Assist Interv. (2007) 10: 27-35.
CEA
Real-time observation of the anatomical connectivity of the brain
At the NeuroSpin platform (I²BM/NeuroSpin), the Computer-Assisted Neuroimaging Laboratory (LNAO) and the NMR Imaging and Spectroscopy Laboratory (LRMN) have jointly developed a tool for calculating diffusion maps in real-time using a 3-Tesla imaging system. Diffusion maps are three-dimensional images that characterise the local mobility of water molecules in brain tissue.
This tool is set to have a significant impact in the clinical research domain. Specifically, clinicians will henceforth be able to access information in real-time during the image acquisition process, information which could prove vital for a patient. During a cerebrovascular accident (CVA) for example, data which would normally only be usable at the end of the examination and following a post-processing phase, may now be accessed by clinicians during the examination. The means several precious minutes can be saved, either to reduce examination times, or to establish "in real-time" whether the images are of the desired quality.
This tool is based on a distributed architecture system, i.e. on a computing technique that enables a series of inter-linked computers to process data simultaneously as opposed to one-by-one; this speeds the process up considerably and allows clinicians to view reconstructed images directly in real-time.
The team responsible for developing this technological innovation is now working on integrating the process into functional MRI systems. Functional MRI is an image acquisition technique that measures brain activity. By applying this novel tool to this technique, cognitive researchers at I²BM will be able to develop new research protocols. During functional MRI examinations, volunteers are presented with a series of stimuli: visual, auditory, etc. Each stimulus generates brain activity which is measured and analysed by computer software, all of which takes a few hours to process. The real-time data analysis provided by this new tool will make it possible to concatenate several stimuli enabling cognitive researchers to adjust stimuli according to the results observed during the examination.
I²BM has filed a patent application for this process, the declaration of which has just been approved by the European Patents Office. The process has also been presented in a paper published in the MICCAI 2007 international conference volume, and has been submitted for publication in the MEDIA journal of image processing.
Ref.: Poupon C, Poupon F, Roche A, Cointepas Y, Dubois J, Mangin JF (2007). Real-time MR diffusion tensor and Q-ball imaging using Kalman filtering. Med Image Comput Comput Assist Interv Int Conf Med Image Comput Comput Assist Interv. 10: 27-35.
Glossary:
Diffusion MRI: image acquisition technique used to measure the mobility of water molecules in brain tissue.
Functional MRI: image acquisition technique that measures brain activity.