Priya Santhanam1, Zhihao Li1,
Claire Coles2, Mary Ellen Lynch2, Xiaoping Hu1
1Department of Biomedical Engineering,
Georgia Institute of Technology/Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States;
2Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory
University
On
account of multifaceted structural damage induced by prenatal alcohol
exposure (PAE), MR image registration problems have been a roadblock in the
detailed analysis of images from this population. The present study examines
the applicability of DARTEL (diffeomorphic anatomical registration through
exponentiated lie algebra) to functional image registration in the PAE
population. As compared to Talairach transformation, functional image
registration by DARTEL had more group difference clusters in expected
regions, and significant correlation between intensity over one difference
cluster and known exposure-related measures. Results imply DARTEL may be a
more accurate method for functional image registration for the PAE
population.