Koushik A. Govindarajan Functional Brain Mapping Techniques

Background  From Chennai, India.  Bachelors in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from AC College of Engineering and Technology, India.  Masters in Biomedical Engineering Wayne State University, Detroit.  Masters Thesis topic: Evaluation of Traumatic Brain Injured Patients through Magnetic Resonance Imaging Thesis Advisor: Dr. E. Mark Haacke Thesis Committee: Dr. Randall Benson Dr. Norman Cheng

Projects involved in:  Pre-operative mapping of eloquent cortex using fMRI in patients with Brain Lesions.  Recent advances in MR imaging of head trauma.

Motivation and methods  Help make functional imaging a more clinical utility.  Usage of functional imaging to delineate critical regions of the brain in pre-operative mapping of tumors and epilepsy.  We employ a battery of paradigms to localize the eloquent cortex.  Each of the paradigms target specific areas of language and cognition.

Results from Tumors and Epilepsy Tumor Epilepsy

Application in Trauma  To evaluate functional activity and extent of deficit due to trauma.  Investigation of severity of impairment in cognition.

Goals and future directions  Increase the sensitivity and specificity of fMRI.  Improve the utility of fMRI in the clinical perspective.  Accomplish a multi-modality approach in Evaluation of Traumatic Brain Injury through MR Imaging.  Improving the ability to better diagnose and predict outcomes from head trauma.