Establishing techniques to identify deep brain nuclei for supporting stereotaxy using high-definition medical imaging

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24791289
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Radiation science
• Research Institution: Nagoya University
• Principal Investigator: Nakane Toshiki 名古屋大学, 医学部附属病院, 病院助教 (60569789)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 脳 / MRI / 解剖

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The purpose of this research is to identify thalamic subnuclei by using clinical MRI. We used T1map, T2map, T2star-map, STIR-proton density weighted images, and MP2RAGE.
We obtained satisfactory results in visualizing mammillothalamic fasciculus, and reported it in 'Japanese Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine'. However, visualization of subnuclei did not reach the satisfactory level, and the results were the same with diffusion kurtosis imaging with standard analysis. We applied functional MRI to visualize it by exploiting functional connectivity between thalamic subnuclei and cerebral cortex. This attempt was successful, and we reported the results in 'Cerebral Cortex'. The limitation of this study is that the analysis was done on the group level. For identifying subnuclei in individuals, further investigation is necessary.

Free Research Field

放射線医学