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Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

National Initiatives

Inria Project Lab

IPL BCI-LIFT

Participants : Maureen Clerc, Théodore Papadopoulo, Nathanaël Foy, Nathalie Gayraud, Federica Turi.

Duration: January 2015 to December 2018

The Inria Project-Lab BCI-LIFT is an Inria-funded reasearch consortium to foster collaborative research on Brain-Computer Interfaces on the topic of Learning, Interaction, Feedback and Training. It is coordinated by Maureen Clerc. Its members are from 6 Inria teams: Athena, Camin, Hybrid, Mjolnir, Neurosys, Potioc, and from Dycog team from CRNL Lyon, and University of Rouen. For more information, refer to the BCI-LIFT website.

ANR

ANR MRSEI LEMONS

Participants : Maureen Clerc, Théodore Papadopoulo.

Duration:october 2015 to april 2017 The ANR MRSEI LEMONS aims to consolidate a European Network by organizing meetings and visits, in order to submit a proposal for a MSCA-ITN. The European consortium is led by Inria (coordinator Maureen Clerc).

ANR MOSIFAH

Participants : Rachid Deriche, Rutger Fick, Demian Wassermann, Maureen Clerc, Théodore Papadopoulo.

Duration: October 2013 to September 2017

This ANR project is about multimodal and multiscale modelling and simulation of the fiber architecture of the human heart. It started on October 2013 and involves three partners: Creatis Team, INSA, Lyon (I. Magnin, Y. Zhu); TIMC-IMAG, CNRS, Grenoble (Y. Uson) and the Athena project team.

It consists in modelling and simulating the ex vivo and in vivo 3D fiber architectures at various scales using multiphysical data from different imaging modalities working at different spatial resolutions. To this end, the myocardium of the human heart will be imaged using respectively Polarized Light Imaging (PLI) and dMRI.

Appropriate diffusion models will be explored including second and fourth order DTI models as well as HARDI models such as the single shell Q-Ball Imaging (QBI). These various types of images will be processed within the right Riemannian mathematical framework to provide tensor as well as Ensemble Average Propagator (EAP) and Orientation Distribution Function (ODF) fields. Virtual cardiac fiber structure (VCFS) will then be modelled using myocardial fiber information derived from each of these imaging modalities. Finally, diffusion behavior of water molecules in these VCFSs will be simulated by means of quantum spin theory, which allows computing ex vivo and in vivo virtual diffusion magnetic resonance (MR) images at various scales ranging from a few microns to a few millimeters. From the obtained virtual diffusion MR images, multiscale and probabilistic atlas describing the 3D fiber architecture of the heart ex vivo and in vivo will be constructed. Meanwhile, the simulation involving a large number of water molecules, grid computing will be used to cope with huge computation resource requirement.

We expect to construct a complete database containing a very wide range of simulated (noise and artifact-free) diffusion images that can be used as benchmarks or ground-truth for evaluating or validating diffusion image processing algorithms and create new virtual fiber models allowing mimicking and better understanding the heart muscle structures. Ultimately, the proposed research can open a completely novel way to approach the whole field of heart diseases including the fundamental understanding of heart physiology and pathology, and new diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of patients.

ANR VIBRATIONS

Participants : Théodore Papadopoulo, Maureen Clerc, Rachid Deriche, Demian Wassermann.

Duration: February 2014 to January 2018

Computational modeling, under the form of a “virtual brain” is a powerful tool to investigate the impact of different configurations of the sources on the measures, in a well-controlled environment.

The VIBRATIONS project proposes to simulate in a biologically realistic way MEG and EEG fields produced by different configurations of brain sources, which will differ in terms of spatial and dynamic characteristics. The research hypothesis is that computational and biophysical models can bring crucial information to clinically interpret the signals measured by MEG and EEG. In particular, they can help to efficiently address some complementary questions faced by epileptologists when analyzing electrophysiological data.

The project follows a three-fold strategy:

  • construct virtual brain models with both dynamic aspects (reproducing both hyperexcitability and hypersynchronisation alterations observed in the epileptic brain) and a realistic geometry based on actual tractography measures performed in patients

  • explore the parameter space though large-scale simulations of source configurations, using parallel computing implemented on a computer cluster.

  • confront the results of these simulations to simultaneous recordings of EEG, MEG and intracerebral EEG (stereotactic EEG, SEEG). The models will be tuned on SEEG signals, and tested versus the surface signals in order to validate the ability of the models to represent real MEG and EEG signals.

The project constitutes a translational effort from theoretical neuroscience and mathematics towards clinical investigation. A first output of the project will be a database of simulations, which will permit in a given situation to assess the number of configurations that could have given rise to the observed signals in EEG, MEG and SEEG. A second – and major - output of the project will be to give the clinician access to a software platform which will allow for testing possible configurations of hyperexcitable regions in a user-friendly way. Moreover, representative examples will be made available to the community through a website, which will permit its use in future studies aimed at confronting the results of different signal processing methods on the same ‘ground truth’ data.

ADT

ADT BOLIS

Participants : Nicolas Schnitzler, Théodore Papadopoulo, Juliette Leblond [APICS project-team] , Jean-Paul Marmorat [CMA Ecole des Mines Paritech] .

Duration: December 2014 to December 2016

ADT BOLIS aims to:

  • build a sofware platform dedicated to inverse source localisation, building upon the elements of software found in FindSources3D. The platform will be modular, ergonomic, accessible and interactive. It will offer a detailed visualisation of the processing steps and the results. The goal is to provide a convenient graphical interface and a tool that can be easily distributed and used by professionals (target audience: clinicians and researchers).

  • Upgrade medInria to use the latest libraries versions involved (this most notably encompasses VTK 6, Qt 5, and DTK 1.0). Then, these new versions will be used to implement a composer (a graphical tool to chain various actions in medInria) and to develop python scripting (for chaining actions and for adding non-regression testing).

ADT OpenViBE-X

Participants : Théodore Papadopoulo, Maureen Clerc, Nathanaël Foy.

Duration: October 2014 to October 2016

The OpenViBE-X ADT addresses the OpenViBE Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) platform, in order to:

  1. make BCI easier to apprehend by end-users

  2. enrich the interaction with multimodal biosignals (eye gaze, heart-rate)

  3. implement methods for auto-calibration and online adaptation of the classification

  4. provide support, maintenance and dissemination for this software.

The OpenViBE platform is a central element to BCI research at Inria, and in the international community.

Other Funding Programs

Big Brain Theory: MAXIM'S

Participants : Demian Wassermann, Alexandra Petiet [ICM, CENIR, Paris] , Stéphane Lehericy [ICM, CENIR, Paris] , Julien Valette [Institut d'Imagerie Biomédicale, CEA, France] , Virginie Callot [Center for Magnetic Resonance in Biology and Medicine - UMR 7339,Center for Magnetic Resonance in Biology and Medicine - UMR 7339] .

Shedding light on the specificity of microstructural MRI biomarkers of axonal and myelin integrity using multi-modal imaging in rodents and quantitative histological correlations.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) biomarkers (BMs) of axonal and myelin integrity suffer from lack of specificity at the microstructural level, which hinders our understanding of disease mechanisms. A better knowledge of the role of the white matter (WM) microstructure in normal and abnormal function relies on the development of MRI metrics that can provide (i) increased specificity to distinct attributes of WM such as local fiber architecture, axon morphology, myelin content, and (ii) specific markers of axonal vs. myelin pathologies. Advanced diffusion-weighted (DW) imaging techniques based on biophysical models of cerebral tissues and cellular compartments can extract for example mean axonal diameters or cellular geometry. In addition, diffusion-weighted spectroscopy (DWS) offers new insights into the diffusion properties of intracellular metabolites. More specifically, probing metabolite diffusion at different time scales allows assessing fiber diameter and length, and the specific compartmentalization of different metabolites in different cell types allows differentiating between astrocytic and neuronal microstructural parameters. Although very promising, these novel techniques still need extensive histological validation.

We propose to develop these two cutting-edge MRI techniques – DW-MRI and DWS, at 11.7T to investigate axonopathy and myelinopathy in well-established mouse models with a single lesion type, and to validate these new microstructural BMs with multivariate quantitative histological analyses.

Duration: March 2016 to March 2019