Venue: Conference room – Neurocentre Magendie
Manojkumar SARANATHAN
Associate Professor
Department of Medical Imaging
University of Arizona, USA
Invited by Thomas Tourdias,
Neurocentre Magendie
Organised by LabEx TRAIL
Abstract
Thalamic nuclei are increasingly implicated in a number of pathology including multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, Alcohol use disorder, and potentially Alzheimer’s disease. The VIM nucleus is the main target for deep brain stimulation for treatment of essential tremor. However, thalamic nuclei largely invisible in conventional T1 and T2 weighted MRI. So indirect methods using atlas-based coordinates are used for targeting and whole volumes are used for looking at changes in thalamic volumes, reducing sensitivity to the disease process. We have been developing MRI pulse sequences and cutting edge image processing techniques for fast automated segmentation of thalamic nuclei. I will present these and illustrate some potential applications to neurosurgery and neuroscience.
Manojkumar SARANATHAN is an MR physicist by training, obtaining his PhD from the University of Washington, Seattle in Bioengineering. Since then he has worked both in the industry and in academia focusing on development of novel MRI techniques for cardiac, real time, abdominal, breast, and neuro applications. His current interests are in the visualization of deep brain structures esp the thalamus and hippocampus, and quantitative MRI for characterization of function and disease. He is currently an Associate Professor in Medical imaging at the University of Arizona, Tucson. He has over 60 journal publications and 10 patents.