PhD project:

Real-time closed-loop biofeedback control of rat brain function

Internship project:

MRI-guided robotic arm for automatic deep brain nuclei targeting

Project goal

Simultaneous BOLD fMRI and fiber-optic recording of fluorescent calcium signals can help clarify the cellular contributions to neurovascular coupling in different brain regions of healthy and diseased animal models^[1] . A key challange is to target the deep brain nuclei with only several hundreds of microns. The goal of the project is to create a robotic controlling system to target small brain nuclei inside the MRI scanner and automate the process to a large degree.

My contribution to the project

My work in the project can be divided in four parts.

1. Describing the kinematics of the structure and devising an algorithm ensuring that the fiber reaches its goal location.

2. Creating an algorithm finding the transformation between the robot and MRI coordinate systems.

3. Developing image processing based techniques allowing preceise location of the fiber tip on MRI images.

4. Integrating the Rat Brain Atlas with a real 3D scanned image of a rats brain to allow defining the target location in a rats brain using the brain atlas.

[1] Kristina Schulz, Fritjof Helmchen, et al. Simultaneous Bold fMRI and fiber-optic calcium recording in rat neocortex. Nature methods. 2012; 9(6): 587-602