Looking from the back, we start our journey deep within the brain in the limbic system, the area that helps control emotion, learning, and memory. Fiber colors indicate directionality: left-right fibers (red), front-back fibers (green), and top-bottom fibers (blue). The video travels through several portions of the brain’s white matter-bundles of fiber that carry nerve signals between the brain and the body, as well as within the brain itself. Hop aboard as we fly up, down, left, and right through the information highways of the human brain! This captivating and eye-catching video was one of the winners of the 2019 “Show us Your Brain!” contest sponsored by the NIH-led Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative. NIH Support: National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke National Cancer Institute Show Us Your BRAINs! Photo and Video Contest (BRAIN Initiative/NIH) Steven Baete (Center for Advanced Imaging Innovation and Research, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York) Human Connectome Project (University of Southern California, Los Angeles) 2019 Sep 198:231-241.īrain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative (NIH) Baete SH, Cloos MA, Lin YC, Placantonakis DG, Shepherd T, Boada FE. Fingerprinting Orientation Distribution Functions in diffusion MRI detects smaller crossing angles. But researchers aren’t stopping there! They are continuing to refine ODF-Fingerprinting, with the aim of modeling the pyramidal tract in even higher resolution for use in devising new and better ways of helping people undergoing neurosurgery. This innovative approach to imaging recently earned Baete’s team second place in the 2021 “Show Us Your BRAINs” Photo and Video contest, sponsored by the NIH-led Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative. The work paired diffusion MRI data from the NIH Human Connectome Project with the ODF-Fingerprinting algorithm, which was created by Baete to incorporate additional MRI imaging data on the shape of nerve fibers to infer their directionality. The researchers who produced this amazing video are Patryk Filipiak and colleagues in the NIH-supported lab of Steven Baete, Center for Advanced Imaging Innovation and Research, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York.
#Medinria view tractography software
So, researchers tapped into the power of their new ODF-Fingerprinting software to improve the image-and, starting about nine seconds into the video, you can see an impressive final result. However, looking lower down, you can see distortions in color and relatively poor resolution of the nerve fibers in the middle of the tract-exactly where the fibers cross each other at angles of less than 40 degrees. The top of the pyramidal tract looks pretty good. The orange, magenta, and other colors represent combinations of these primary directional orientations.Ībout three seconds into the video, a rough draft of the 3D reconstruction is complete. Colors are used to indicate the primary orientations of the nerve fibers: left to right (red), back to front (green), and top to bottom (blue). But, very quickly, a more colorful, detailed 3D reconstruction begins to appear, swiftly filling in from the top down. In the first second of the video, you see gray, fuzzy images from a diffusion MRI of the pyramidal tract. It has potential to enhance the reliability of these 3D reconstructions as neurosurgeons begin to use them to plan out their surgeries to help ensure they are carried out with the utmost safety and precision. The video above demonstrates how adding a sophisticated algorithm, called Orientation Distribution Function (ODF)-Fingerprinting, to such modeling can help overcome this problem when reconstructing a pyramidal tract. Still, for technical reasons, the quality of these reconstructions has remained poor in parts of the brain where nerve fibers cross at angles of 40 degrees or less. These signals control many important activities, including the voluntary movement of our arms, legs, head, and face.įor a while now, it’s been possible to combine a specialized form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with computer modeling tools to produce 3D reconstructions of complicated networks of nerve fibers, such as the pyramidal tract. What you are viewing is a colorized, 3D reconstruction of a pyramidal tract, which are bundles of nerve fibers that originate from the brain’s cerebral cortex and relay signals to the brainstem or the spinal cord. If you think it resembles a pyramid, then you and a lot of great neuroscientists are thinking alike. Flip the image above upside down, and the shape may remind you of something.
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