Advances In Brain Imaging Techniques

The book reviews the recent developments in brain imaging and their technological advancements to understand molecular mechanisms associated with neurological disorders and basic behaviors in humans and rodents at the structural, molecular, and functional levels. It discusses the usefulness of advanced optical microscopy techniques, including optical coherence tomography (OCT), miniscope, multiphoton fluorescence (2PF & 3PF), adaptive optics, harmonic generation, and Raman microscopy for understanding pathomechanism of brain disorders and pathological and physiological changes associated with neurodegenerative diseases. Also, the book presents conventional imaging modalities, including Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), for delineating underlying mechanisms and precise early diagnosis of neurological disorders. This book is a useful resource for neuroscientists and researchers working in biomedical engineering and optics.

Remarkable advances in medical diagnostic imaging have been made during the past few decades. The development of new imaging techniques and continuous improvements in the display of digital images have opened new horizons in the study of brain anatomy and pathology. The field of brain imaging has now become a fast-moving, demanding and exciting multidisciplinary activity. I hope that this textbook will be useful to students and clinicians in the field of neuroscience, in understanding the fundamentals of advances in brain imaging.

This volume highlights the remarkable new developments in brain imaging, including those that apply magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET), that allow us to non invasively study the living human brain in health and in disease. These technological advances have allowed us to obtain new and powerful insights into the structure and function of the healthy brain as it develops across the life cycle, as well as the molecular make up of brain systems and circuits as they develop and change with age. New brain imaging technologies have also given us new insights into the causes of many common brain disorders, including ADHD, schizophrenia, depression and Alzheimer’s disease, which collectively affect a large segment of the population. These new insights have major implications for understanding and treating these brain disorders, and are providing clinicians with the first ever set of biomarkers that can be used to guide diagnosis and monitor treatment effects. The advances in brain imaging over the last 20 years, summarized in this volume, represent a major advance in modern biomedical sciences.

The brain is the most complex computational device we know, consisting of highly interacting and redundant networks of areas, supporting specific brain functions. The rules by which these areas organize themselves to perform specific computations have only now started to be uncovered. Advances in non-invasive neuroimaging technologies have revolutionized our understanding of the functional anatomy of cortical circuits in health and disease states, which is the focus of this book. The first section of this book focuses on methodological issues, such as combining functional MRI technology with other brain imaging modalities. The second section examines the application of brain neuroimaging to understand cognitive, visual, auditory, motor and decision-making networks, as well as neurological diseases. The use of non-invasive neuroimaging technologies will continue to stimulate an exponential growth in understanding basic brain processes, largely as a result of sustained advances in neuroimaging methods and applications.

This book highlights the rapidly developing field of advanced optical methods for structural and functional brain imaging. As is known, the brain is the most poorly understood organ of a living body. It is indeed the most complex structure in the known universe and, thus, mapping of the brain has become one of the most exciting frontlines of contemporary research. Starting from the fundamentals of the brain, neurons and synapses, this book presents a streamlined and focused coverage of the core principles, theoretical and experimental approaches, and state-of-the-art applications of most of the currently used imaging methods in brain research. It presents contributions from international leaders on different photonics-based brain imaging modalities and techniques. Included are comprehensive descriptions of many of the technology driven spectacular advances made over the past few years that have allowed novel insights of the structural and functional details of neurons. The book is targeted at researchers, engineers and scientists who are working in the field of brain imaging, neuroscience and connectomics. Although this book is not intended to serve as a textbook, it will appeal to undergraduate students engaged in the specialization of brain imaging.

Over the past two decades researchers and clinicians in the neurosciences have witnessed a literal information explosion in the area of brain imaging and neuropsychological functioning. Until recently we could not view the nervous system except through the use of invasive procedures. Today, a variety of imaging techniques are available, but this technology has advanced so rapidly that it has been difficult for new information to be consolidated into a single source. The goal of this volume is to present information on technological advances along with current standards and techniques in the area of brain imaging and neuropsychological functioning. The quality of brain imaging techniques has improved dramatically. In 1975 one had to be content with a brain image that only offered a gross distinction between ventricular cavities, brain, and bone tissue. Current imaging techniques offer considerable precision and approximate gross neuroanatomy to such an extent that differentiation between brain nuclei, pathways, and white gray matter is possible. These technological advances have progressed so rapidly that basic and clinical research have lagged behind. It is not uncommon, particularly in longitudinal research, for the technical meth odology of a study to become obsolete while that study is still in progress. This has hampered certain aspects of systematic research and has also produced the need for a textbook that could address contemporary issues in brain imaging and neuropsychology.

In recent years, revolutionary technical advances have permitted neuroscientists to map the functioning of the brain in exquisite detail. Of interest are the new techniques that visually display cell energy metabolism which is coupled to functional brain activity in behaving animals. This is the first book dealing with the application of 2-deoxyglucose and related metabolic mapping techniques for brain imaging of behavioral and learning functions. Quantitative autoradiographic techniques based on the use of exogenous markers include radiolabeled glucose and its analogs, especially 2-deoxyglucose and fluorodeoxyglucose. Other mapping techniques are based on the histochemical staining of endogenous metabolic markers such as cytochrome oxidase, as well as immunohistochemistry for expression of c-fos genes. In spite of the great potential capabilities of the new imaging techniques, relatively few neuroscientists are using this approach to study brain functions related to behavior. There is a need to review state-of-the-art applications of these methods in behavioral neuroscience, and to formulate recommendations for future research in this area. This book is intended to fulfill these needs by bringing together leading neuroscientists using metabolic mapping approaches to elucidate brain mechanisms of behavior. Discussions are not limited to one animal species, but they cover a broad range of vertebrates with unique behavioral capabilities.

Remarkable advances in medical diagnostic imaging have been made during the past few decades. The development of new imaging techniques and continuous improvements in the display of digital images have opened new horizons in the study of brain anatomy and pathology. The field of brain imaging has now become a fast-moving, demanding and exciting multidisciplinary activity. I hope that this textbook will be useful to students and clinicians in the field of neuroscience, in understanding the fundamentals of advances in brain imaging.