Séminaire INT MeCA team

Vendredi 7 avril à 14h30, Salle Henri Gastaut

MeCA team: Julien Lefèvre, Alexandre Pron, Steven Jia, Angeline Mihailov, Olivier Coulon
(Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone)

Prenatal brain development and MR imaging of the fetus

Abstract:
A large part of the MeCA team’s research focuses on cortical variability and organization at the macroscopic level. In this context, observing normal pre-natal development is critical since most of the cortical folding is formed in utero during the second half of pregnancy. Part of the team’s activities is therefore to observe, quantify, and model prenatal brain development using fetal MRI acquisitions. In this presentation we will present the construction of a fetal brain MR image database with more than a thousand subjects, acquired at the Neuroradiology Department of the Timone Hospital for several years, as well as the issues related to the acquisition, reconstruction, and analysis of such images. We will then present a project that aims at quantifying the developmental trajectories of different measures to describe normal development and its variability. Finally, we will discuss the limitations of using such a cross-sectional database and how the use of non-human primates can address these limitations.