Visiting Speaker & Seminar Series

Friday, January 27th, 2017
9:00 a.m.
PX236/238 PsychHealth Bldg., Bannatyne Campus

Dr. Chase Figley
Assistant Professor - Department of Radiology, University of Manitoba Principal Investigator - Neuroscience Research Program
Core Member - Biomedical Engineering Graduate Program, University of Manitoba
Adjunct Assistant Professor - Department of Physiology & Pathophysiology, University of Manitoba
Adjunt Assistant Professor - Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba
Adjunct Research Scientist - Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University

What’s new in human neuroimaging? Recent advances in MRI acquisition, analysis, and applications

BIO:  Chase Figley is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Radiology at the University of Manitoba and a Principal Investigator within the Neuroscience Research Program at the Kleysen Institute for Advanced Medicine. In addition, he also holds adjunct appointments in Biomedical Engineering (University of Manitoba), Diagnostic Imaging (Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre), and the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences (Johns Hopkins University). Before moving to Winnipeg in September 2013, he completed a BSc (Honors) in Chemistry at the University of Saskatchewan (2001-2005), a PhD in Neuroscience at Queen’s University (2005-2010), and a CIHR-sponsored Postdoctoral Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University (2010-2013). The ongoing research in his lab is primarily focused on developing and applying advanced neuroimaging methods – e.g., functional MRI (fMRI), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), myelin water imaging (MWI), and voxel based morphometry (VBM) – to study brain structure and function in both healthy and clinical populations.

ABSTRACT:  Despite major advances in our ability to characterize white matter microstructure with novel acquisition methods like diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and Myelin Water Imaging (MWI), these improvements have not yet translated into better diagnostic or prognostic capabilities in Multiple Sclerosis (MS) or other white matter disorders. In other words, more sophisticated data acquisition methods alone have not overcome the well-known “clinico-radiological paradox” (i.e., where imaging biomarkers such as lesion count, lesion volume, etc. do not accurately or reliably predict patients’ clinical outcomes). Fortunately, our knowledge about how the brain is organized into large-scale functional networks offers a number of clues about how these problems might be dealt with using more sophisticated data analysis approaches. In this talk, I will briefly discuss the organization and topology of these networks in order to suggest that the locations of white matter lesions – as opposed to the total number or overall volume, per se – are likely what underlie specific functional deficits. I will then proceed to describe two new data analysis approaches that my lab has been working on to: 1) ascribe local white matter changes to specific functional brain networks, and 2) detect and measure local white matter changes along white matter tracts. Finally, I will close by presenting a few recent examples of how these methods have already been used to study structure-function relationships throughout the brain, and how white matter alterations in these regions are correlated with individual differences in body composition and other neuroimaging biomarkers in MS.

/sent on behalf of

Dr. Eftekhar Eftekharpour

Coordinator  - MNN Visiting Speaker & Seminar Series Program

eftekhar.eftekharpour@umanitoba.ca

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