Advanced morphometric tools applied to the study of human brain anatomy

ABSTRACT

In this mini-course, taught within the course “Biomedical Image Processing” of the Master's program in Medical Bioinformatics A.A. 2023 - 2024, we will discuss various techniques for the noninvasive characterization of brain structures during normal aging as well as to detect potential changes in the presence of pathology, with particular focus on those methods based on magnetic resonance imaging. We will start from the classical Region Of Interest (ROI) analysis, to explore also more advanced techniques like the Voxel-Based Morphometry (VBM) and the Surface-Based Morphometry (SBM). These techniques are used to compare and perform statistics between different populations of subjects, tipically patients versus healthy controls. During the hands-on session, we will test some of these techniques on real data from patients suffering from schizophrenia; the lab session will be given in MATLAB and the data will be provided by the instructor.

The course schedule will be as follows:

* Monday  13/05  13:30 - 16:30  (theory, room T.06)
* Tuesday 14/05  13:30 - 16:30  (hands-on, room Alfa)