Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

International Initiatives

• Title: Analysis of structural MR and DTI in neonates

• Inria principal investigator: Bertrand Thirion [Parietal]

• Asclepios investigator: Xavier Pennec

• International Partner (Institution - Laboratory - Researcher):

  • Institution: University of Southern California (United States)

  • Laboratory: Image Lab at Children Hospital at Los Angeles

  • Researcher: Natasha Leporé

• Duration: 2011 - 2013

• See also: http://www.capneonates.org/

• While survival is possible at increasingly lower gestational ages at birth, premature babies are at higher risk of developing mental disorders or learning disabilities than babies born at term. A precise identification of the developmental differences between premature and control neonates is consequently of utmost importance. Nowadays, the continuously improving quality and availability of MR systems makes it possible to precisely determine, characterize and compare brain structures such as cortical regions, or white matter fiber bundles. The objective of this project is to understand the developmental differences between premature and normal neonates, using structural and diffusion MRI. This work consists in identifying, characterizing and meticulously studying the brain structures that are different between the two groups. To do so, we join forces with the Parietal team at Inria and the University of Southern California. Parietal has a recognized expertise in medical image registration and in statistical analyses of groups of individuals. USC has a broad knowledge in MR image processing. In particular, the Children's Hospital at Los Angeles (CHLA), which is part of USC, is in the process of collecting a unique database of several hundred MR scans of premature and normal neonates. This joint collaboration consequently offers a unique chance of addressing key questions pertaining to neonatal and premature development. It will make it possible to elaborate new tools for analyzing neonate MR images while tremendously increasing our knowledge of neuroanatomy at an early stage in life.

France Stanford collaborative project grant (2013-2014):Understanding Lower Back Pain through Geometric Statistical Analysis of computed tomography (CT) Images. Stanford, Statistics Dept & Nice Univ. Hospital. Principal investigators X. Pennec (Inria) and S. Holmes (Stanford). Collaboration on statistics on group-valued trees and geometric subspace learning [55] .