Principal investigators
(contact PI)
(MPI)
(MPI)
Investigators in the LINC project are organized in five inter-institutional teams:
Circuits team
The circuits team will define the pathways involved in deep-brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus; annotate these pathways using anatomic tracing in non-human primates (NHPs), as well as novel microscopy and diffusion MRI tractography techniques in both NHP and human; and study the role of these pathways in DBS patient outcomes. The circuits team will guide the microscopy teams in the selection of the brain sub-volumes to be imaged, and will advise the computational team on the validation of pathways obtained from the automated analysis of the imaging data.
Key personnel:
Suzanne Haber, PhD
University of Rochester
Team lead, center MPI
Michael D. Fox, MD, PhD
Brigham & Women’s Hospital
Team co-lead, site PI
Andreas Horn, MD, PhD
Brigham & Women’s Hospital
Computational team
The computational team will develop pipelines for pre-processing of imaging data; registration across sections, modalities, and brains; segmentation of axons in microscopy images; multi-scale tractography; cross-validation of axon bundles between modalities; sharing and remote interaction with the data. The computational team will support the circuits team with tools for the annotation of pathways and the analysis of patient data, and will assist the microscopy teams and MRI team with optimizing their data acquisition pipelines based on the output of validation studies.
Key personnel:
Anastasia Yendiki, PhD
Massachusetts General Hospital
Team lead, center MPI
Satrajit Ghosh, PhD
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Team co-lead, site PI
Yael Balbastre, PhD
Massachusetts General Hospital
Eugenio Iglesias, PhD
Massachusetts General Hospital
MRI team
The MRI team will develop and deploy diffusion and structural MRI protocols for ex vivo imaging of NHP and human brains, and in vivo imaging of patients; implement MR image reconstruction algorithms to minimize artifacts; and develop methods for forward and inverse mapping between axonal microstructure and diffusion MRI signals. The MRI team will work closely with the computational team and microscopy teams to segment the structures of interest in the microscopy data that will be used to investigate the mapping between diffusion MRI signals and microstructure.
Key personnel:
Susie Huang, MD, PhD
Massachusetts General Hospital
Team lead
Bruce Fischl, PhD
Massachusetts General Hospital
Team co-lead
Hong-Hsi Lee, MD, PhD
Massachusetts General Hospital
Optical microscopy team
The optical microscopy team will design, build, and test platforms for whole-hemisphere polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT) with multiple illumination angles, and for rapid, spectrally multiplexed 3D lightsheet microscopy (LSM); integrate PS-OCT with LSM for imaging of fluorescent tracers in NHPs; develop protocols for clearing, immunolabeling, and LSM of cut sections; collect PS-OCT/LSM data from NHP and human brains. The optical microscopy team will work with the X-ray microscopy team to test the compatibility of their pipelines and will provide input to the computational team on building software tools for data transfer and analysis.
Key personnel:
Elizabeth Hillman, PhD
Columbia University
Team lead, center MPI
Hui Wang, PhD
Massachusetts General Hospital
Team co-lead
Zhuhao Wu, PhD
Weill Cornell Medicine
Site PI
X-ray microscopy team
The X-ray microscopy team will test, optimize, and deploy protocols for hierarchical phase-contrast tomography (HiP-CT) in human brains; collect multi-scale HiP-CT data from intact brains; collect HiP-CT at even higher resolution in samples excised from the area of the subthalamic nucleus; perform osmium staining and micro-CT in the excised samples to validate the HiP-CT contrast. The X-ray microscopy team will provide input to the computational team on building software tools for data transfer and analysis, and will assist the MRI team with interpretation of the microscopy data towards the modeling of diffusion MRI signals.
Key personnel:
Claire Walsh, PhD
University College London
Team lead, site MPI
Peter Lee, PhD
University College London
Team co-lead, site MPI
Jeff Lichtman, PhD
Harvard University
Site PI