MRI workshop for newbies

In the context of an ISPY-funded stay at UCLouvain of Jorge Jovicich, director of the MRI lab at CIMeC-IT, an (f)MRI workshop is organised on November 27 to 29, 2019.

Additional speakers in the workshop will be Christophe Phillips (Ulg), Hans Op de Beeck (KUL), Mohamed Rezk (UCLouvain), Remi Gau (UCLouvain) and Olivier Collignon (UCLouvain).
Phd students registered in an FNRS doctoral school will surely be able to credit this training activity.

The workshop targets beginners and aim to explain the basic principles of (f)MRI recording and analyses. So no previous knowledge is required. Intermediate/advanced neuroimagers may surely find it useful to refresh or consolidate their knowledge but the workshop is not designed to cover the latest methodological trends.

The workshop will be free of charge for anyone attending and will be held in English. Registrations are complete.

------ PRELIMINARY PROGRAM --------

Day1 (Woluwe): Jorge Jovicich

• Basics: NMR signal, generating an MRI, MRI contrast
• Structural MRI: Contrasts for morphometry. Challenges.
• Functional MRI: BOLD contrast. Fast MRI. Preprocessing. Challenges
• Diffusion MRI: Diffusion contrast. Preprocessing. Tractography. Challenges

Day 2 (Woluwe)

Morning: Christophe Phillips

• GLM principle & 1st level fMRI model, aka. FFX
• Contrasts & Classical Inference
• Group analysis, aka. RFX
• Mulitple Comparison & Image-wise inference
• Functional and effective connectivity (eg PPI, DCM)- if times allow.

Afternoon: Hans Op de Beeck

• Multivariate analyses: History, principles, advantages....
• Multivariate analyses:The methods (Correlation, Decoding, RSA....)
• Multivariate connectivity

Day 3 (Louvain-La-Neuve):  Mohamed Rezk + Remi Gau + Olivier Collignon

• Experimental design
• Illustration of the different methods with real data
• BIDS format + Github (scripts)
• Hands-on

The first 2 days are mostly "theoretical" and will take place at Auditoire Central J. MAISIN (max. 120 persons), Avenue Emmanuel Mounier 51, 1200 Brussels (Woluwe).

The last day is more "practical" (including hands-on) and will take place at Salle Shannon - Maxwell Building - Place du Levant, 3, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve.

To participate to the last day, it is mandatory that you come with your own laptop with matlab installed (for the hands-on). Due to practical constraints, this last day is limited to max. 50 people. If more than 50 people are interested, priority will be given to early PhD students.

Aside the formal "teaching", we will try to have moments for informal discussions with the speakers during breaks, including having a drink at the end of the day.