Virendra Mishra1,
Ni Shu2, Lina Chalak3, Nancy K. Rollins4,
Cathy Halovanic5, Yong He2, Hao Huang1
1Advanced
Imaging Research Center, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center,
Dallas, TX, United States; 2State Key Laboratory of Cognitive
Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China; 3Department
of Pediatrics, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX,
United States; 4Department of Radiology, University of Texas
Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States; 5Children's
Medical Center of Dallas, Dallas, TX, United States
Characterizing the normal prenatal brain network development will not only expand our understanding of formation of functionally significant brain circuits, but also shed light on understanding the abnormal network development associated with child mental health. However, prenatal brain network development has not been characterized in the literature. In this study, high resolution DTI data of ex vivo fetal brains at 20 weeks of gestation and in vivo neonatal brain at term were acquired. Graph theory analysis was conducted with the brain nodes parcellated from a template free algorithm and edges quantified based on DTI tractography.