neuro

:: on fiber tracking

5 minute read Published:

Take a little swim through your brain canals!
After brief description of diffusion tensor images and what information they provide, I discuss an intuitive seed-based line propagation algorithm for computing a tractography map of a neuroimage. The open-source softwares required are 3D Slicer, ITK for C++, and ITK-SNAP.

:: cortical surface analysis in Huntington's disease using linear-mixed models

8 minute read Published:

Noobs think linear regression is easy... enter LMMs.
Although it will be published after StoneAnno, this shape analysis is my first completed research project and technically my first first-authorship, submitted to Brain. I wrote code in R and MATLAB to fit LMMs to the cortical data from T1w MRI of HD patients and then performed statistical analyses on the results using SurfStat and random field theory. We found that, with a novel method for measuring gyrification, LGI uniquely detects changes in the insula.

:: dimensionality reduction on neural data

5 minute read Published:

PCA vs. autoencoder: the ultimate dimensionality reduction showdown
I fell in love with dimensionality reduction when I was learning statistical ML. Since I also study neuroscience, I wanted to practice the art at the intersection of my interests. I compared the 3D projections of a 53-dimensional neurophysiology dataset produced by PCA and a shallow autoencoder.