The Rutgers project aims to solve this problem through a collaboration of information scientists, cognitive scientists and computer scientists and engineers. Years from now, the new software will allow a neurologist to take dynamic brain scans, tap into the online archives to find patients around the world with similar images, and pull up the case records of those patients, Kantor said. Their work will combine cutting-edge mathematical and computational analysis with a file-sharing system at Rutgers called "RUMBA." Similar to Napster, which allows the sharing of data through the Internet, this system enables physicians and scientists to maintain their own data files at hospitals and laboratories, yet share them online.
The new search tools that will be developed are based on the idea of dynamic brain activity. When something happens in the brain, signals go from place to place, creating a pathway through neurons that can be seen by brain imaging techniques such as fMRI.
This activation is like a spreading vine that expands through the brain over time, Kantor explained. But the underlying signals are hidden by the complex chemistry of the brain, much as the leaves of a vine hide the stalks.
The Rutgers research aims to find the vine amidst the leaves, Kantor said. This requires filtering away the secondary signals and "noise," to see the original path of activation. A second component of the research could be called "vine matching." This is the mathematical problem of figuring out when one vinelike pattern is similar to another.
Other co-principal investigators on the project include Deborah Silver, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, Rutgers-New Brunswick; Ben Martin Bly, assistant professor of psychology, Rutgers-Newark; Sven Dickinson, associate professor of computer science, University of Toronto; Lawrence Shepp, professor of s
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Contact: Patricia Lamiell
plamiell@ur.rutgers.edu
732-932-7084
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
24-Oct-2002