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J Michael Brady

Publications and source records attributed to J Michael Brady.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Advances in functional and structural MR image analysis and implementation as FSL.

The techniques available for the interrogation and analysis of neuroimaging data have a large influence in determining the flexibility, sensitivity, and scope of neuroimaging experiments. The development of such methodologies has allowed investigators to address scientific questions that could not previously be answered and, as such, has become an important research area in its own right. In this paper, we present a review of the research carried out by the Analysis Group at the Oxford Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain (FMRIB). This research has focussed on the development of new methodologies for the analysis of both structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging data. The majority of the research laid out in this paper has been implemented as freely available software tools within FMRIB's Software Library (FSL).

Bayes Theorem↗

Fully Bayesian spatio-temporal modeling of FMRI data.

We present a fully Bayesian approach to modeling in functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI), incorporating spatio-temporal noise modeling and haemodynamic response function (HRF) modeling. A fully Bayesian approach allows for the uncertainties in the noise and signal modeling to be incorporated together to provide full posterior distributions of the HRF parameters. The noise modeling is achieved via a nonseparable space-time vector autoregressive process. Previous FMRI noise models have either been purely temporal, separable or modeling deterministic trends. The specific form of the noise process is determined using model selection techniques. Notably, this results in the need for a spatially nonstationary and temporally stationary spatial component. Within the same full model, we also investigate the variation of the HRF in different areas of the activation, and for different experimental stimuli. We propose a novel HRF model made up of half-cosines, which allows distinct combinations of parameters to represent characteristics of interest. In addition, to adaptively avoid over-fitting we propose the use of automatic relevance determination priors to force certain parameters in the model to zero with high precision if there is no evidence to support them in the data. We apply the model to three datasets and observe matter-type dependence of the spatial and temporal noise, and a negative correlation between activation height and HRF time to main peak (although we suggest that this apparent correlation may be due to a number of different effects).

Bayes Theorem↗

Nonrigid registration of 3-D free-hand ultrasound images of the breast.

Three-dimensional (3-D) ultrasound imaging of the breast enables better assessment of diseases than conventional two-dimensional (2-D) imaging. Free-hand techniques are often used for generating 3-D data from a sequence of 2-D slice images. However, the breast deforms substantially during scanning because it is composed primarily of soft tissue. This often causes tissue mis-registration in spatial compounding of multiple scan sweeps. To overcome this problem, in this paper, instead of introducing additional constraints on scanning conditions, we use image processing techniques. We present a fully automatic algorithm for 3-D nonlinear registration of free-hand ultrasound data. It uses a block matching scheme and local statistics to estimate local tissue deformation. A Bayesian regularization method is applied to the sample displacement field. The final deformation field is obtained by fitting a B-spline approximating mesh to the sample displacement field. Registration accuracy is evaluated using phantom data and similar registration errors are achieved with (0.19 mm) and without (0.16 mm) gaps in the data. Experimental results show that registration is crucial in spatial compounding of different sweeps. The execution time of the method on moderate hardware is sufficiently fast for fairly large research studies.

Algorithms↗