Acquisition of a Magnetic Resonance Imaging System for Research on the Neural Basis of Human Cognition

Abstract

Abstract : From August 15, 2002 through August 14, 2003 the neuroimaging facility housing a 3T MRI unit has been operational; the MRI unit has had one upgrade in software and hardware and this has added significantly to its capabilities. The primary support staff for the fMRI facility have been hired. Several software tools for image display, analysis, registration and file conversion have been developed, expanded and refined in the same time frame. Methods for semi-automated and automated image segmentation based on an unbiased edge detection method (scale-space edge detection) have been developed to the stage of routine, bug-free use. In the future we will utilize high performance computing (parallel processing methods) to reduce the computation time from approximately 40 hours to under 10 minutes for segmentation of the whole human brain. The Neuroinformatics Center (NIC) was successful in obtaining a National Science Foundation-Major Research Instrumentation grant for over $1 million to establish a high performance computing capability for the BBMI research applications during this past year. Several ongoing research projects (described below) continue to characterize the structural and functional properties of the brain systems important in sensory, perceptual and cognitive processing.