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. The goal is to reach a next generation of non-invasive Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI), more specifically BCI that are easier to appropriate, more efficient, and suit a larger number of people. For more information, refer to the BCI-LIFT website.

ANR

ANR MRSEI LEMONS

Participants : Maureen Clerc, Théodore Papadopoulo.

Duration: October 2015 to April 2017

Call: ANR MRSEI Montage de réseaux scientifiques européens ou internationaux 2015

LEMONS (Learning, Monitoring, Operating Neural Interface) aims to consolidate a European Network by organizing meetings and visits, in order to submit a proposal for a MSCA-ITN Training Network. The European consortium was led by Athena (coordinator Maureen Clerc). The European consortium was composed of 8 beneficiaries from 6 countries (Inria, EPFL, TU Graz, Fondazione Santa Lucia, Albert-Ludwigs Universität Freiburg, Universiteit Leiden, Université Lyon 1, eemagine GmbH) and 8 additional Partner Organizations from clinical and industrial sectors. The LEMONS project was submitted twice but was eventually not selected for EU funding.

ANR NeuroRef

Participants : Demian Wassermann, Antonia Machlouziredes, Guillermo Gallardo, Rachid Deriche.

Duration: October 2016 to September 2019

Call: NSF-ANR Program Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience 2015

This project is a collaboration with Pr.S.Bouix and his team at the Psychiatry NeuroImaging Lab, Dept of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School (USA) to build MRI reference atlases to analyze brain trauma and post-traumatic stress. The goal is to develop a robust framework to perform subject-specific neuroimaging analyses of Diffusion MRI (dMRI), as this modality has shown excellent sensitivity to brain injuries and can locate subtle brain abnormalities that are not detected using routine clinical neuroradiological readings.

ANR MOSIFAH

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

Duration: October 2013 to September 2017

Call: ANR Numerical Models 2013

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.

ANR VIBRATIONS

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

Duration: February 2014 to January 2018

Call:ANR Programme de Recherche Translationnelle en Santé (PRTS) 2013

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.

ADT

AMDT BCI-Browser

Participants : Théodore Papadopoulo, Maureen Clerc.

Duration: 1 year

Most often, BCI techniques are demonstrated in simple toy applications made. The only "few" real BCI applications are specific developments and are not used much as they lack of functionality, maintenance, .... The goal of this development contract is to demonstrate a new approach to BCI, in which BCI interactions are integrated in existing applications. Ideally, the original software is not modified and not even recompiled. It is modified by providing either modified GUI libraries or providing extensions as plugins. As a proof of concept, we aim at modifying C++/Qt applications with a focus on web browsing, by redefining some of its basic interactions (mouse clicks, keyboard, ...) using some BCI components. In this manner, it might be possible to drive standard and state-of-the-art application using BCI and at a limited maintenance cost.

This contract is part of the AMDT initiative.

ADT BOLIS 2

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

Duration: 6 months.

This contract is a follow-up of ADT BOLIS which aimed at building a sofware platform dedicated to inverse source localisation, building upon the elements of software found in FindSources3D. The platform is modular, ergonomic, accessible and interactive and offers a detailed visualisation of the processing steps and the results. Its 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). BOLIS 2 aims at simplifying some maintenance aspects of the software.

This contract is part of the AMDT initiative.

Other Funding Programs

Big Brain Theory ICM Program: 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