ABSTRACT

Brain dynamics, which reflects the healthy or pathological states of the brain with quantifiable, reproducible, and indicative dynamics values, remains the least understood and studied area of brain science despite its intrinsic and critical importance to the brain. Unlike other brain information such as the structural and sequential dimensions that have all been extensively studied with models and methods successfully developed, the 5th dimension, dynamics, has only very recently started receiving systematic analysis from the research community. The state-of-the-art models suffer from several fundamental limitations that have critically inhibited the accuracy and reliability of the dynamic parameters' computation. First, dynamic parameters are derived from each voxel of the brain spatially independently, and thus miss the fundamental spatial information since the brain is ?connected?. Second, current models rely solely on single-patient data to estimate the dynamic parameters without exploiting the big medical data consisting of billions of patients with similar diseases.

This project aims to develop a framework for data-driven brain dynamics characterization, modeling and evaluation that includes the new concept of a 5th dimension - brain dynamics - to complement the structural 4-D brain for a complete picture. The project studies how dynamic computing of the brain as a distinct problem from the image reconstruction and de-noising of convention models, and analyzes the impact of different models for the dynamics analysis. A data-driven, scalable framework will be developed to depict the functionality and dynamics of the brain. This framework enables full utilization of 4-D brain spatio-temporal data and big medical data, resulting in accurate estimations of the dynamics of the brain that are not reflected in the voxel-independent models and the single patient models. The model and framework will be evaluated on both simulated and real dual-dose computed tomography perfusion image data and then compared with the state-of-the-art methods for brain dynamics computation by leveraging collaborations with Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital / Weill Cornell Medical College (WCMC) and Northwell School of Medicine at Hofstra University. The proposed research will significantly advance the state-of-the-art in quantifying and analyzing brain structure and dynamics, and the interplay between the two for brain disease diagnosis, including both the acute and chronic diseases. This unified approach brings together fields of Computer Science, Bioengineering, Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroradiology to create a framework for precisely measuring and analyzing the 5th dimension - brain dynamics - integrated with the 4-D brain with three dimensions from spatial data and one dimension from temporal data. Results from the project will be incorporated into graduate-level multi-disciplinary courses in machine learning, computational neuroscience and medical image analysis. This project will open up several new research directions in the domain of brain analysis, and will educate and nurture young researchers, advance the involvement of underrepresented minorities in computer science research, and equip them with new insights, models and tools for developing future research in brain dynamics in a minority serving university.

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