Assist. Prof. Onur Afacan
Harvard Medical School
Boston Children’s Hospital
Date/Time: Thursday, April 19th, 5:30 pm
Meeting ID: 926 8664 5941 (Passcode: 896970)
https://zoom.us/j/92686645941?pwd=ZEpFcTNzNVFTdnVJdkZmZmQwUzQ2QT09
Abstract: Pediatric neuroimaging is challenging due to several reasons. The first reason is that young patients cannot hold still in the scanner, and the resultant motion significantly deteriorates image quality, often making it impossible for clinical interpretation. The second challenge is due to the rapid change in both structure and function of the developing brain during normal growth. And the third challenge is the small size of the structures in a pediatric brain requiring higher-resolution imaging. In this talk, I will highlight some research from my lab that is aimed at addressing some of these challenges. First, I will describe our approaches to measure and correct motion and motion-related field changes. I will then discuss how motion measurements can be used to evaluate image quality, to retrospectively correct for motion artifacts or to prospectively steer the FOV in real time. Next, I will discuss methods to correct secondary effects of motion, such as B0 and B1 field inhomogeneities, affecting the quality of the resultant images. Finally, I will present some of our work that aims to generate high-resolution structural and functional information in the developing brain, especially in neurological disorders such as epilepsy and multiple sclerosis
About the Speaker: Dr. Onur Afacan is an Assistant Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School, co-Director of QUIN Research Group, and scientific director of the Research Imaging Core at Boston Children’s Hospital. He received his B.Sc degree from Middle East Technical University, M.Sc degree from Bilkent University, and Ph.D. degree from Northeastern University, all in electrical and computer engineering. He joined Boston Children’s Hospital in 2012, where he conducted postdoctoral research at the Computational Radiology Laboratory, where he trained as an MRI physicist. He is currently a principal investigator in multiple NIH and foundation grants.