L to R: Drs. Gang Li, Dinggang Shen & Li Wang
The Department would like to congratulate Co-Principal Investigators Gang Li, PhD, Dinggang Shen (contact), PhD, and Li Wang, PhD, for receipt of National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) funding ($466.5K/year), renewed annually, for their five-year project (8/03/2018 – 4/30/2023) entitled, “Continued Development of Infant Brain Analysis Tools.”
This project builds upon joint UNC/University of MN NIMH 2016-funded research – Baby Connectome Project (BCP), led by Co-PI and Department Vice Chair of Basic Research Weili Lin, PhD and Co-PI Dinggang Shen, PhD. The BCP has yielded unprecedented charting of infant brain MRI data for better understanding of behavioral skills from infancy to early childhood via structural and functional connectivity patterns. However, the BCP’s critical lack of computational tools for accurate processing and analysis of these infant MRI data drives the aims of this newly funded project.
A central aim of this study is to employ infant-centric MRI processing software — infant Brain Extraction and Analysis Tool (iBEAT) – developed by this research group. A software standard driving MRI studies of early brain development since its 2012 release, iBEAT and its continuous development, hardening, and dissemination is the focus of this study. Over five years of funding, these UNC investigators will conduct a range of pursuits tied to iBEAT, including: 1) creating an innovative learning-based, multisource information integration framework for joint skull stripping and tissue segmentation; 2) constructing longitudinal infant brain atlases at multiple intervals of infancy for variably weighted MR images; 3) developing a novel learning-based approach for cortical topology correction and integration, as well as infant-centric analysis tools and atlases for cortical surfaces, and 4) improving software functionalities through systematic functionalities and training.
All of these pursuits aim to employ the iBEAT software package for precise mapping of dynamic and complex cortical changes in infants, as well as to release the processed BCP data to the public. This research group has worked closely with Dr. Weili Lin’s group to process all acquired infant brain images, and then investigate the correlation of imaging measurements with infant development cognitive scores.