
Human Connectome Project Updates - neurotech1
http://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/imaging/brain-scanning-just-got-very-good-and-very-unsettling?utm_content=buffera9ad6&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer#.V3RLFDgLxrs.hackernews
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mirimir
The article title is rather clickbaity. The only unsettling aspect is this:

> The HCP project has also moved brain scanning into the realm of the feature
> film Minority Report by showing that a person’s brain activity is as unique
> as a fingerprint and that it can be used to identify a person with 99
> percent accuracy.

Once someone can scan your brain, they have many other ways to determine who
you are. I was expecting something substantive about brain structure/function.

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joe_the_user
And actually, for biometric data, 99% is fairly crappy.

After, a person's birthday identifies them with a greater than 364/365
accuracy.

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zmeden
If you give a color badge to each person in the world and you have 365 colors
to choose from, how accurately would a specific color identify a person?

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nitrogen
What is 1-(1/365)?

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FeepingCreature
Should probably involve the population there somewhere?

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Ntrails
Sort of.

If I have a population of 1, or <= 365 and uniform dist of birthdays, the
probability of a date being a valid identifier is 100%.

If I have a population of 365 with randomly distributed birthdays, then it is
going to be the probability of not sharing a birthday with any of them (very
low)

Once you can guarantee at least 2 people with each birthday the identifier is
simply zero percent effective.

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lostlogin
> radiologists to acquire high-resolution images up to 8 times as fast as they
> previously could using traditional MRI machines.

I think the author means 'radiographer' not radiologist. I also wonder about
the claims as to how this will change clinical imaging. I get that this is a a
amazing project, and it will have some far reaching effects but changes to
clinical imaging will be limited imho. Multibanding existing sequences will
make them faster, but sequences that benefit from the technique (bold and
diffusion primarily) are not big clinical techniques. Diffusion is a routine
tool but at <2 minutes it's hardly a problem to acquire. Maybe I'm missing
something big like everyone getting a a functional scan as part of a routine
clinical brains scan?

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ihnorton
> Diffusion is a routine tool but at <2 minutes it's hardly a problem to
> acquire.

The kinds of high-angular coverage scans they are talking about here (60-120+
gradient directions) take 45+ minutes on current clinical scanners. These
scans give improved white matter resolution -- both spatially and for complex
sub-voxel microstructure. With acceleration and faster gradient ramps the
connectome scanner can get that down to under 15 minutes. It's still a long
time for routine clinical use (typical U.S. scan sessions are billed in ~40
minute increments), but more feasible than 45+.

~~~
lostlogin
We are running scans with 64 directions that are 8ish minutes, they look good.
I'll have a look when I get into work, because there is obviously a large
difference between their sequences and ours. Ours are not product sequences
but they aren't anything too radical. Edit: to step further back, are you
aware of anything that these undoubtably better scans offer in a clinical
setting? How will they change treatment? We would run DTI occasionally when
some surgery is planned and the surgeon wants to avoid a particular tract, but
this isn't a common occurance.

~~~
ihnorton
Interesting, thanks. I didn't realize multiband was so fast on the Skyra -
good to know.

The big advantage in principle for neurosurgery is better resolution of
crossing fibers and complex branching, for example the lower/lateral
projections of the CST to hand area. I'm not sure if any clinical software can
take advantage of these scans, yet, though -- so processing would probably
need to be done under IRB in researchy software. There's also ongoing work in
several groups to better resolve and possibly even characterize tissue
microstructure in and around tumors using multi-shell DWI (especially relating
to edema).

Here's one small study that compared several high-angle methods to standard
DTI:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23254805](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23254805)

Walt Schneider's group at Pitt has also done studies in neurosurgery planning
and TBI using HARDI-type methods (no cite handy at the moment).

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lucb1e
Meta: what a weird and distracting page. From the top there is a menu, logo,
menu, breadcrumbs (I guess?), and then content. From left to right there is
content, stuff, stuff and more stuff. Only 25% of the page (excluding the
header!) is content. It's not even clear to me why I should be interested in
looking at the other three columns.

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striking
I tried widening the screen across both my monitors. It looked... interesting.
[http://i.imgur.com/MoKakDW.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/MoKakDW.jpg)

~~~
Houshalter
I mean, in fairness, if you have a Window that wide, what do you expect to
see? It would normally either be blank space, or ridiculously stretched out
text. I guess you could split the text into multiple columns like newspapers
do, but I haven't seen many websites do that.

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adonovan
"To achieve that kind of speed and resolution, the [Connectom] machine draws
22 megawatts of power"

Can that be right? The average large US hospital uses only 2.1MWe on average.

Source: Table H6 of
[https://www.eia.gov/consumption/commercial/reports/2007/larg...](https://www.eia.gov/consumption/commercial/reports/2007/large-
hospital.cfm) (57 billion kWhe annually for 3,040 large hospitals)

~~~
neurotech1
22MW is comparable to the electricity consumed by the worlds top
supercomputer, including cooling system.

It seems they are using a large high performance compute cluster, and not a
"branded" supercomputer like the Blue Gene/Q.

[http://www.humanconnectome.org/documentation/HCP-
pipelines/m...](http://www.humanconnectome.org/documentation/HCP-
pipelines/meg-pipeline.html)

[http://chpc.wustl.edu/who.html](http://chpc.wustl.edu/who.html)

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
I personally don't see any difference between a large enough computing cluster
and a supercomputer.

~~~
neurotech1
Marketing and branding. The BlueGene/Q installation is sold as a package.

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marmaduke
This is one of the greatest recent resources for human neuroscience. This
project is giving hundreds (and soon thousands) of subjects' worth of
structural, diffusion and functional datasets. This is a huge step toward
developing community consensus on how to model human neuroimaging data, which
is hindered by the tendency of most labs to keep their data.

The datasets are also great quality, preprocessed and aligned.

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neopallium
Here is a link to the project's website:

[https://www.humanconnectome.org/](https://www.humanconnectome.org/)

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pseud0r
Assuming development continues as today we should have the first (synaptic
level) human connectome ready around 2035. Should be interesting.

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Bromskloss
What a weird, Hacker-News specific URL. Here's a normal one:
[http://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-
os/biomedical/imaging/bra...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-
os/biomedical/imaging/brain-scanning-just-got-very-good-and-very-unsettling)

~~~
sctb
Thanks, we updated the submission link.

~~~
Houshalter
It's not changed for me. I get this url on the HN link:

    
    
        spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/imaging/brain-scanning-just-got-very-good-and-very-unsettling?utm_content=buffera9ad6&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer#.V3RLFDgLxrs.hackernews

