Interactive Visualization of Functional Brain Connectivity

Functional brain connectivity from fMRI studies has become an important tool in studying functional interactions in the human brain as a complex network. The correlation between the fMRI activity traces of distinct brain regions indicates to what extent they are functionally connected. fMRI connectivity data typically consists of a matrix of correlations, also denoted as functional correlations, either at the voxel level or averaged over anatomically defined brain regions using an anatomical template such as the Automated Anatomical Labeling (AAL). In this thesis, we present methods for the interactive visualization of functional brain connectivity, both for region-based connectivity matrices and for correlation data at voxel resolution. The techniques were implemented in two different visual analysis applications, containing different representations that are coupled, supporting linked interaction. A GPU-accelerated raycasting technique was used to enable the real-time visualization of the voxel-wise functional brain networks. We have evaluated our tools via case studies with domain scientists at two different university medical centers.Section Computer Graphics and VisualizationDeptartment of Intelligent SystemsElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc