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Review
. 2019 Jan 15:185:891-905.
doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.03.049. Epub 2018 Mar 22.

The UNC/UMN Baby Connectome Project (BCP): An overview of the study design and protocol development

Brittany R Howell  1 , Martin A Styner  2 , Wei Gao  3 , Pew-Thian Yap  4 , Li Wang  4 , Kristine Baluyot  4 , Essa Yacoub  5 , Geng Chen  4 , Taylor Potts  4 , Andrew Salzwedel  6 , Gang Li  4 , John H Gilmore  2 , Joseph Piven  7 , J Keith Smith  8 , Dinggang Shen  4 , Kamil Ugurbil  5 , Hongtu Zhu  9 , Weili Lin  10 , Jed T Elison  11
Affiliations
Review

The UNC/UMN Baby Connectome Project (BCP): An overview of the study design and protocol development

Brittany R Howell et al. Neuroimage. .

Abstract

The human brain undergoes extensive and dynamic growth during the first years of life. The UNC/UMN Baby Connectome Project (BCP), one of the Lifespan Connectome Projects funded by NIH, is an ongoing study jointly conducted by investigators at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Minnesota. The primary objective of the BCP is to characterize brain and behavioral development in typically developing infants across the first 5 years of life. The ultimate goals are to chart emerging patterns of structural and functional connectivity during this period, map brain-behavior associations, and establish a foundation from which to further explore trajectories of health and disease. To accomplish these goals, we are combining state of the art MRI acquisition and analysis techniques, including high-resolution structural MRI (T1-and T2-weighted images), diffusion imaging (dMRI), and resting state functional connectivity MRI (rfMRI). While the overall design of the BCP largely is built on the protocol developed by the Lifespan Human Connectome Project (HCP), given the unique age range of the BCP cohort, additional optimization of imaging parameters and consideration of an age appropriate battery of behavioral assessments were needed. Here we provide the overall study protocol, including approaches for subject recruitment, strategies for imaging typically developing children 0-5 years of age without sedation, imaging protocol and optimization, a description of the battery of behavioral assessments, and QA/QC procedures. Combining HCP inspired neuroimaging data with well-established behavioral assessments during this time period will yield an invaluable resource for the scientific community.

Keywords: Baby connectome project; Behavior; DTI; Infancy; Lifespan connectome project; MRI; Neurodevelopment; dMRI; rfMRI.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Interest

Conflicts of interest: none.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Subject flow for the Baby Connectome Project
Figure 2
Figure 2
Diffusion-weighted images for different b-values in a representative 6-month-old dataset.
Figure 3
Figure 3
FA and MD absolute difference maps of a 6-month-old for the different sampling schemes in comparison with the reference dataset.
Figure 4
Figure 4
FA normalized absolute differences.
Figure 5
Figure 5
MD normalized absolute differences.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Angular accuracy of fiber orientations estimated using the tensor model.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Angular accuracy of fiber orientations estimated using the multi-tissue model.
Figure 8
Figure 8
T1w, T2w, and resting BOLD quality from two 24-month-olds
Figure 9
Figure 9
The upper and lower rows show the comparison results on the same neonatal subject (scanned 18 days after birth) with different spatial resolutions: 1mm3 and 0.5mm3. From left to right: intensity image, segmentation, WM/GM rendering, and zoomed views for better visualization.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Intrinsic functional connectivity networks for seeds placed in the pre- and post-central gyrus.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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