Dr. Brad Sutton
Brad Sutton received his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Michigan. He is currently a Professor of Bioengineering, Beckman Institute, Neuroscience, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the Carle Illinois College of Medicine at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and is a fellow of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. He is also the Technical Director of the Biomedical Imaging Center at Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois. His research interests are in the development of novel magnetic resonance imaging methods to measure and visualize brain function along with speech and swallowing dynamics, focusing on developing sensitive measures of changes in structure and function with age. He has authored 160+ peer reviewed journal publications, 180+ conference publications, and has 9 patents related to MRI and image analysis technology. Dr. Sutton is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).
Seminar Details
Seminar Title: Ultrafast functional MRI: A tool for examining physiological signals in functional brain imaging
Abstract:
Resting state functional MRI (fMRI) using ultra high field MRI scanners can non-invasively probe the internal communications in the brain, allowing us to map out network connectivity by looking for temporally correlated functional signals from different brain regions. These provide a powerful look at an individual brain’s functional organization. However, physiological noise (cardiac pulsations and respiratory motion) along with motion of the head during the scanning session can cause significant signals in fMRI and lead to spurious correlations along with masking smaller functional connections. The physiological noise can induce spatially distributed correlations and can have some reproducible characteristics within populations and could appear as functional connections. With the widespread use of standardized imaging protocols, these signals may be sampled similarly across sites and studies. Besides being confounding signals, these signals can reflect important physiological properties of the brain and its vasculature.
In this talk, I will provide an overview of resting state connectivity imaging at Illinois leveraging the new ultra high field MRI system. In addition, I will provide an early look at a new technique to sample fMRI data with a very fast, whole brain 3D acquisition to enable examination of these signals along with physiological signals reflecting properties of the vasculature. I will explain how the technique works and show some example data that demonstrates its potential use to separate the sampling of physiological signals from the brain functional signals.