A unique and continuous tractography for both brain and spinal cord

As a part of work between the hospital of Rennes and the VisAGeS team, the EMISEP project focuses on multiple sclerosis (MS) which affects the spinal cord. We address the evaluation of the potential of focal lesions and diffuse lesions observed using diffusion MRI early in the disease course to predict the EDSS at 5 years in relapsing-remitting MS patients. The diffusion MRI data will be pre-processed prior to the beginning of the internship: distortion correction, diffusion model estimation, fiber tracking of the brain and spine separately. We will focus on the development of a strategy to join both tractograms to obtain a continuous representation of fibers for brain and spinal cord. We will first evaluate state-of-the-art registration method to identify the main challenges in the task of gluing together brain and spine tractography. The processing will be performed on the whole EMISEP dataset, and the results will be evaluated based on the total length of the reconstructed fiber bundles. Last, the results of fiber tracking will be used to perform track-based statistical analysis of the diffusion parameters along the reconstructed fibers and correlated with clinical scores.

Faculty Supervisor:

J. Cohen-Adad

Student:

Partner:

Inria Rennes - Bretagne Atlantique Research Centre

Discipline:

Mathematics

Sector:

University:

École Polytechnique de Montréal

Program:

Globalink Research Award