Modeling and tracking human brain white matter pathways

COEX 

This introductory lecture will cover the fundamentals of diffusion MRI (dMRI) analysis. The principles of dMRI signal formation will be introduced. Analysis methods that are used to make inferences about the microstructure of white matter at the level of individual voxels will be surveyed. Since this is an area of long-standing, but also very active research, we will introduce both classical signal models, as well as newer biophysical tissue models. Finally, we will discuss methods of computational tractography, used to make inferences about brain connections. We will point out some promising applications of tractography, as well as acknowledge challenges and avenues for future research.