Abstract #3266

Investigating the association between conductivity and brain development over the neonatal period

Arnaud Boutillon^1,2, Roy Kurtzbard¹, Oliver Gale-Grant³, Anthony Price^1,4, Jeffrey Hand¹, Dafnis Batalle^3,5, Maria Deprez^2,5, and Shaihan Malik^1,5

¹Imaging Physics and Engineering Research Department, School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences, King's College London, London, United Kingdom, ²Biomedical Computing Research Department, School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences, King's College London, London, United Kingdom, ³Department of Forensic and Neurodevelopmental Sciences, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience, King's College London, London, United Kingdom, ⁴Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering, Guys and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London, United Kingdom, ⁵Early Life Imaging Research Department, School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences, King's College London, London, United Kingdom

Synopsis

Keywords: Electromagnetic Tissue Properties, Electromagnetic Tissue Properties

Motivation: Tissue electrical properties are known to change over the neonatal period, but efforts to measure these in humans in vivo are scarce.

Goal(s): This study aims at quantifying brain electrical properties by retrospectively analysing MRI data from a large study, and to explore relationships with development.

Approach: We developed processing pipelines to extract conductivity measurements from three separate complex MRI datasets acquired as part of the developing human connectome project.

Results: Regression analysis including 726 infants showed a significant decrease in brain conductivity between postmenstrual ages 28 and 44 weeks at a rate of -0.012 to -0.014 S/m/week consistent between the three measurements.

Impact: This preliminary study showed a consistent and significant linear decrease in brain conductivity (-0.012 to -0.014 S/m/week) during the neonatal period. This is likely driven by changes in water content, but future work will explore a biophysical explanation.

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