Mind Research Network University of New Mexico ALFF Analysis Mind Research Network University of New Mexico Bryan Galindro
Sponsors Dr. Jessica Turner Associate Professor in Translational Neuroscience Dr. Vince Calhoun Professor of Electrical Engineering Director of the Mind Research Network
Project Overview Develop a general-use software package to run ALFF analysis on resting state fMRI data of schizophrenic subjects Subjects information will be gathered from various sites
Project Overview Software needs to: Read in subject files from various sites Perform Analysis Save results in arbitrary directories All of the programming will be done in Matlab
Schizophrenia 1% of the human population is affected by schizophrenia Effects of Schizophrenia Decrease in neural connectivity Functional disability Degeneration of gray matter
ALFF Amplitude of Low Frequency Fluctuations
ALFF Frequency Range: 0.01Hz – 0.08Hz Low frequency fluctuations are correlated with functional connectivity An increase in ALFF reflects an increase in functional connectivity between brain regions
rFMRI Resting Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
rFMRI Measures blood flow with respect to neural activity Neurons fire -> blood flows into region Measures oxygenated/deoxygenated hemoglobin in the blood Hemoglobin is diamagnetic when oxygenated and paramagnetic when deoxygenated
Project Milestones ALFF Analysis (default parameters) Early Psychosis Low pass filter 0.01Hz to 0.08Hz Look at reliability of different ALFF measures Early Psychosis Before and after antipsychotic medication Spectroscopy Analysis Comparing ALFF measures with spectroscopy MRN Processing Analysis Run ALFF analysis on subjects with chronic schizophrenia undergoing a change in medication
Project Goals Develop software package that that will allow users to dynamically customize functionality to suit application specific requirements in the neuroscience filed Automatically include the ALFF into the MRNs centralized system for data management and analysis
Size/Scope of team Working with Dr. Turner After I run the ALFF analysis I will go over the results with Dr. Turner Will be working with the imaging data analysis team at the MRN
Challenges Finding the correct file types located in large databases over multiple sites Run various analyses on data from several sites without changing the data or file path
Goals for the Month Write Matlab program for early psychosis Run ALFF analysis on early psychosis data sets
Deliverables Software package that will allow us to run ALFF analysis on fMRI data from several sites and over multiple large scale studies
Why is this a good senior design project? I am using my engineering background to explore different areas of science