[BIC-announce] CIM-CREATE Seminar Series: Dr. Louis Collins: MNI: Friday, March 22/13 at NOON in MC103

[Krys Dudek]

Greetings to all,

The first seminar in the CREATE-MIA Seminar Series will be held on Friday, March 22, 2013 at Noon in MC103 (McConnell Engineering Building).
All are welcome.

Best regards,

Krys

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"Image processing techniques for diagnosis and prognosis in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease"

Speaker: Professor D. Louis Collins, Department of Biomedical Engineering and McConnell Brain Imaging Centre, McGill University
Time: 12:00 - 1:30pm
Date: Friday, March 22, 2013
Location: McGill School of Computer Science, MC103

Abstract:

Alzheimer's currently affects approximately 0.5 million people in Canada, 5 million in North America, 25 million worldwide and will quadruple in prevalence by 2050 due to aging of the population. The social and financial costs are enormous. At present, it is estimated that the disease will affect 1 in 14 people that live to 80 years old. The aging baby-boomers are changing the population demographics, increasing the total numbers of people with AD. The good news is that the pharmaceutical industry is on the verge of a breakthrough in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.

As in most diseases, early treatment of patients, before they have too much irreversible degeneration of brain tissue, is likely to be more effective. However, it is currently almost impossible to test drugs in patients with early Alzheimer's disease, due to the fact that only about 10-15% of patients with symptoms of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) suggestive of possible Alzheimer's disease will actually go on to develop Alzheimer's per year. This percentage is too low to allow for reasonably sized clinical trials, and it is unlikely that regulators would approve a drug for a population of patients, most of whom will never get the disease.

In this talk, I will describe progress in image processing techniques (cortical thickness, local textures) from our lab to detect patterns of brain atrophy characteristic of Alzheimer's disease and to use this information to generate statistical models to predict which patients with MCI will rapidly go on to develop Alzheimer's disease.

The tools we develop substantially facilitate the development of therapies for early Alzheimer's disease.They make it feasible to perform drug trials in patients with MCI due to early Alzheimer's disease, and, looking forward, they will make it possible to select patients in the clinic for early treatment.

Biography:

Dr. Collins is a professor in Neurology & Neurosurgery, Biomedical Engineering and associate member of the Centre for Intelligent Machines(CIM) at McGill and associate member of the McGill Centre for Studies in Aging. He teaches BDME650, the Advanced Medical Imaging course in the Department of Biomedical Engineering.

His laboratory develops and uses computerized image processing techniques such as non-linear image registration and model-based segmentation to automatically identify structures within the human brain. These techniques are applied to a large data bases of magnetic resonance (MR) data from normal subjects to quantify anatomical variability. In image-guided neurosurgery (IGNS), these techniques provide the surgeon with computerized tools to assist in interpreting anatomical, functional and vascular image data, permitting the effective planning and execution of minimally invasive neurosurgical procedures.

Automated atlasing is essential in IGNS for thalamotomy and pallidotomy in the treatment of Parkinson's disease, or temporal-lobe depth electrode implantation in the diagnosis of epilepsy, since tissue targets in these procedures cannot be viewed directly on MR. Computerized atlasing minimizes trauma to the patient and allows resection of the smallest amount of brain tissue necessary for effective therapeutic treatment.




_________________________________________________________
Krys (Christine) Dudek
Program Administrator, NSERC CREATE Program for Medical Image Analysis
Centre for Intelligent Machines
3480 University Street
McConnell Engineering Building, Room 410
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
H3A 2A7

kdudek at cim.mcgill.ca

www.cim.mcgill.ca/create-mia

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