Explorative analysis of fetal cortical surface data

[MrBurnst]

Explorative analysis of fetal cortical surface data

Project Description

Understanding the maturation of the human brain from a smooth surface to its highly convoluted state at birth is an essential quest in the field of neuroscience. In the last decade the development of fast MR imaging protocols and advanced image processing methods has enabled imaging of the fetal brain at unprecedented detail. However, data availability is very limited due to comparatively rare examinations, small study sizes and high population variability.

In the spirit of open and repeatable research, we present the preliminary release of a dataset of 33 pre-processed MRI acquisitions of healthy fetal brains of 26 individuals imaged between GW 20 and GW 36. Furthermore, we provide cortical surface models human fetal cerebral hemispheres consisting of densely sampled surface triangulations that are matched between hemispheres and across time to serve as a standardized reference frame for surface-based analysis of cerebral development in utero.

During the hackaton, I'd welcome anyone interested to do so to get in touch and bounce around ideas how to get the most out of this data.

Skills required to participate

Since this is a very open project, people with all type of skills can contribute, but experience with visualization and maybe computational geometry might come in handy.

Aims

Brainstorming on how to visualize and interpret the growth of the fetal brain in utero and what methods to apply for fun and profit.

Data availability

Unfortunately, I cannot (yet) put the data online - people interested in working on it will have to provide their names and contact email and I will provide a download link.

Communication

https://mattermost.brainhack.org/brainhack/channels/ohbm19_hackaton_fetal

[katjaq]

This is awesome!! Really looking forward to having a look at your data and trying some vis with @r03ert0 , and analyses. We have recently proposed a method to measure cortical folding and applied it across 34 primate species. Would be lovely to see how it works on developmental data!