Department of Computer Science and Bioimaging Research Center, The University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA.
Brain Imaging Behav. 2011 Sep;5(3):189-202. doi: 10.1007/s11682-011-9123-6.
Quantitative mapping of structural and functional connectivities in the human brain via non-invasive neuroimaging offers an exciting and unique opportunity to understand brain architecture. Because connectivity alterations are widely reported in a variety of brain diseases, assessment of structural and functional connectivities has emerged as a fundamental research area in clinical neuroscience. A fundamental question arises when attempting to map structural and functional connectivities: how to define and localize the best possible Regions of Interests (ROIs) for brain connectivity mapping? Essentially, when mapping brain connectivities, ROIs provide the structural substrates for measuring connectivities within individual brains and for pooling data across populations. Thus, identification of reliable, reproducible and accurate ROIs is critically important for the success of brain connectivity mapping. This paper discusses several major challenges in defining optimal brain ROIs from our perspective and presents a few thoughts on how to deal with those challenges based on recent research work done in our group.
通过非侵入性神经影像学对人类大脑的结构和功能连接进行定量映射，为理解大脑结构提供了一个令人兴奋且独特的机会。由于连接改变在各种脑部疾病中广泛报道，因此评估结构和功能连接已成为临床神经科学的一个基础研究领域。在尝试绘制结构和功能连接图时，出现了一个基本问题：如何定义和定位大脑连接映射的最佳可能的感兴趣区域 (ROI)？从本质上讲，在绘制大脑连接图时，ROI 为测量个体大脑内的连接以及在人群中汇总数据提供了结构基础。因此，确定可靠、可重复和准确的 ROI 对于大脑连接图绘制的成功至关重要。本文从我们的角度讨论了定义最佳大脑 ROI 时面临的几个主要挑战，并就如何根据我们小组最近的研究工作应对这些挑战提出了一些想法。
