Explorations in the field of brain connectivity analysis and visualization

PhD ceremony: Mr. A. Crippa, 11.00 uur, Aula Academiegebouw, Broerstraat 5, Groningen

Dissertation: Explorations in the field of brain connectivity analysis and visualization

Promotor(s): prof. J.B.T.M. Roerdink

Faculty: Mathematics and Natural Sciences

In his thesis Alessandro Crippa investigated structural and functional brain connectivity by means of DWI, fMRI and EEG analysis. By focusing both on the analysis and on the visualization of the results, he wants to provide techniques that could be useful to improve the understanding of the complex system that is our brain.

Crippas thesis contains the following studies: an approach, based on probabilistic tractography, to investigate tinnitus and how tinnitus is related to the limbic system; a tensor interpolation technique for enhancing DTI tractography by allowing the tracking of splitting fiber bundles; a heuristic approach, based on the application of force-directed graph layout to DWI data, for the investigation of structural properties of the (pre)sensory motor cortex; a method that generalizes the notion of mean graph and allows the comparison of multiple multichannel EEG data sets, and its application to some clinical cases; a method, based on graph analysis, for the investigation of functional connectivity with fMRI.