MICCAI 2018 Daily - Tuesday

Rena Elkin is a PhD student at Stony Brook University on Long Island in New York. She speaks to us about her poster yesterday on using a regularised version of optimal transport to model the flow of the glymphatic system. The novelty of this work is that it can give trajectory information, based off of a series of dynamic contrast enhanced images. Rena tells us some of the challenges include the size of the images, the fact that there is noise in the data, and problems with getting the actual transport map. How have they tackled some of these challenges from an algorithmic point of view? Rena explains: “ That’s the benefit of using the optimal transport theory, which really nicely suits the ideas of noise, unbalanced equations, and getting exactly this trajectory. We have successfully captured known glymphatic flow pathways and provided additional trajectory information. ” Finally, Rena says they are looking to improve the method. Next, they want to take a Lagrangian streamline approach , as well as extend it to human subjects. They’d also like to be able to distinguish specifically between flows in normal and pathological cases. 8 Poster Presentation With Rena Elkin “ That’s the benefit of using the optimal transport theory! ”