Imaging Biomarkers for Neurologic Disease

Download or read book Imaging Biomarkers for Neurologic Disease written by Anas Zainul Abidin and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Neurological disorders constitute a major health as well as societal burden across the globe. The problem is further aggravated by the growth of geriatric population. Although the etiology of these disorders is fairly broad, a consistent observation is the prevalence of atypical connectivity changes occurring across brain regions, particularly if the diseases processes target synapses. Estimating this connectivity using functional neuroimaging continues to be one the most challenging methodological problems in the field of computational neuroscience. Brain connectivity, particularly in clinically oriented research applications of functional MRI (fMRI), is primarily studied through correlation analyses which while being computationally and conceptually simpler, tend to ignore the non-linear, directional and multivariate characteristics of the brain. The goal of this thesis is to tackle the limitations of existing methods for studying functional connectivity through novel techniques. The specific focus is to enhance the use of advanced connectivity beyond tautological deductions on brain organization to demonstration of their applicability in clinical scenarios. This is accomplished through (1) development and extensive validation of techniques based on dynamic systems modeling and Granger causality, (2) adaptation of graph theoretic analysis and network based techniques for appropriate statistical inference. The application of these methods is demonstrated on datasets from two neurologic diseases (a) HIV associated neurocognitive disorders, and (b) Autism spectrum disease. The results obtained lend credence to the utility of improved connectivity computation methods for detection of neurologic diseases and also the localization of its effects in the brain. These methods could be of significant interest for the development of non-invasive functional MRI derived biomarkers, which could be pertinent for various clinical applications, including early detection, monitoring progression or detecting response to therapy."--Pages xv-xvi.