Michiel Cottaar

Tractography

Diffusion MRI tractography struggles to accurately predict where white matter tracts actually terminate on the cortical surface. We are working on models to include the information of the cortical shape from structural MRI to improve the accuracy of the tractography close to the cortex, which should lead to more accurate mappings of which the connections to and between cortical regions.

Microstructure

Diffusion MRI data collected using the traditional pulsed gradient spin echo sequence does not contain enough information to extract all microstructural parameters expected to affect the signal. This leads to degeneracies between the parameters, which have to be resolved by making strong assumptions about the microstructural properties of the tissue. We are investigating more advanced diffusion MRI sequences (such as multiple diffusion encoding) intended to break this degeneracies as well as expanding current models to allow different microstructural parameters for fibers crossing within a single voxel.