MedINRIA MRI Visualization and Processing

I just ran across a site that has a few medical imaging software packages. One of them is MedINRIA.

“MedINRIA aims at providing to clinicians state-of-the-art algorithms dedicated to medical image processing and visualization. Efforts have been made to simplify the user interface, while keeping high-level algorithms. Each application is called a module, and can be loaded dynamically from a single main window. MedINRIA is available for Microsoft Windows XP/Vista, Linux Fedora Core, MacOSX, and is fully multithreaded.”

Link to a description and download.

MedINRIA screenshot

I have not tried the software yet – my MRI analysis software is FSL – but this software looks promising. Plus it runs natively on Windows, Linux (Fedora Core), and Mac OS X (FSL only runs natively in OS X and Linux – it’s a little tricky to run in Windows). Not that running in Windows is necessarily a perk – our preferred MRI processing workstation is a Mac – but many people are using Windows. If I get around to installing the software, I’ll post a review of it later. I’m always looking to user-friendly ways to analyze MRI data. Best of all, like FSL, it is free. It is based, in part, on the open-source and excellent ITK and VTK packages.

The beginnings of functional neuroimaging

Angelo MossoAngelo Mosso was an Italian physiologist, interested in many things but among them, blood flow and blood pressure in humans. He was born in Turin in 1846 to a father who was a carpenter by trade. Showing great promise in school, Mosso was able to attend the University of Turin and study the natural sciences. Always the consummate and prodigious researcher, over the course of his career he published more than 200 articles and books. Mosso’s work helped lay the foundation for many important (and modern) neuroscientific research methods, such as fMRI and the polygraph.

Mosso demonstrated in the late 1800s an increase in brain blood vessel pulsation as people thought about things. He interpreted this to mean that blood flow increased to the brain when people had thoughts. This particular study was one of the first (documented) functional neuroimaging (of sorts) studies. Both fMRI and PET are based on the idea that increased blood flow to the brain is associated with changes in cognition. It’s doubtful that he could have imagined how influential this research would be.

Visit this site for a longer biography of Mosso.

Another anatomy site

I found a nice but very basic anatomy site (i.e., good for kids). It also has more anatomy than just the brain, with skeletal, heart, and digestive tract anatomy in English and Spanish.

Click on the image to visit the site.
Brain Site

Can we improve our brains?

I thought this was an interesting article. It has a lot of quotes from leading neuroscientists about the possibility of “training” our brains to improve them.

clipped from www.sharpbrains.com

Cognitive Fitness: 10 Debunked Myths

clipped from www.sharpbrains.com
Over the last year we have interviewed a number of leading?brain health and fitness scientists and practitioners worldwide to learn about their research and thoughts, and have news to report.
What can we say today that we couldn’t have said only 10 years ago? That what neuroscience pioneer Santiago Ramon ySantiago Ramon y Cajal Cajal claimed in the XX century, “Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculptor his own brain“, may well become reality in the XXI. And influence Education, Health, Training, and Gaming in the process.

  blog it

Great Skull Anatomy Site

I stumbled across this wonderful anatomy site that focuses on the skull. You can move your mouse over different parts of the skull to highlight their names. You can also mouse over a structure and have the area of the skull highlighted. This is a wonderful study guide if you have to know the parts of the skull.

clipped from www.tk-online.de

Brain Heatsink to Reduce Seizures

Some Japanese researchers applied for a patent on an implanted brain radiator to reduce heat in areas of focal seizures. This device works in the same way as heatsinks in computers and radiators in cars. The researchers found that seizure activity increases the temperature of the affected brain area so they want to decrease seizures by decreasing the temperature. I have to admit, this is one of the strangest brain disorder treatments I’ve seen in quite a while.Brain Radiator

Link to NewScientist article

The Brain From Top to Bottom

Today I discovered an interesting site about the brain. From the site: Each currently available topic…takes you to several sub-topics, with 5 levels of organization and your choice of 3 levels of explanation.” You can choose the level at which you want the topics explained – basic to advanced. The site covers the topics: “From the Simple to the Complex,” “Memory and the Brain,” “Pleasure and Pain,” “Emotions and the Brain,” “Evolution and the Brain,” “Body Movement and the Brain,” “The Senses,” “Mental Disorders,” “How the Mind Develops,” “From Thought to Language,” “Sleep and Dreams,” and “The Emergence of Consciousness.” The last two topics have not been posted yet, however.

Here’s the link to The Brain From Top to Bottom

The site is simple and nicely organized. The information on it looks like it is accurate and, at the advanced level, seems like it is written at a High School or College level.

The site is published by The Canadian Institutes of Health Research and The Canadian Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction. It is available for free to the public and can be used however someone sees fit.

Split-belt Treadmill as Therapy for Brain-injured Patients

CNN has an interesting article about a split-belt treadmill that is being used for stroke survivors and other people with brain injuries.

Story here

The treadmill’s two belts can move independently and even in opposite directions. Doctors and researchers are trying to find any underlying intact neural circuitry by providing unique motor challenges to brain injury patients.

Time for an OCD Post

Time has a nice article about obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) titled “When worry hijacks the brain.” Like most articles by journalists, it’s a bit melodramatic (e.g., “Even the most stable brain operates just a millimeter from madness”) at times but overall it is a nice introduction to OCD and the biology (neuroscience) behind the disorder.

The basics of MRI

For a simply fabulous introduction to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) visit Dr. Hornak’s site: http://www.cis.rit.edu/htbooks/mri/

It provides a basic but very in-depth overview of MR imaging, including the statistics and physics behind the images. It’s probably the best freely-available resource about MRI on the web.