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Contact name: Gabriele Gratton
Contact email: grattong@illinois.edu

Samantha Rubinstein, Cognitive Neuroimaging Lab, will lecture on her First Year Project, "Association Between Somatomotor Control and Structural Brain Measures in Aging."

It is widely known that aging influences numerous bodily systems, but this effect can be partially prevented by physical activity and fitness. Here we investigated the relationships between the structural integrity of various brain regions involved in somatomotor control, fitness, and cognition across the lifespan (age 25-75). We hypothesized that fitness levels would be correlated with brain volumes in regions related to somatomotor control as well as with cognition. Participants’ abilities were assessed through a variety of tasks using the NIH Toolbox and measures of cardiorespiratory fitness. Global and regional volumetric measures were derived from T1 MRI images with Freesurfer 6.0. As expected, age was negatively correlated with cognition, motor abilities, and intracranial volume. Results revealed two independent aspects of somatomotor control that were associated with aging and fitness. Both balance and dexterity were correlated with a variety of cortical and subcortical volumes, including the thalamus and motor areas. Interestingly, balance and dexterity were not correlated with each other. However, both are known to affect processing speed, which can subsequently influence other cognitive outcomes. Our results demonstrate the complexity of the relationships between aging, fitness, somatomotor control, and brain structures.  

Contact name: Sharlene Denos
Contact email: denos@illinois.edu

Mark Anastasio, Department of Bioengineering, UIUC, will lecture on "Objective assessment of biomedical imaging technologies in the age of deep learning."

It is widely accepted that the assessment and refinement of biomedical imaging technologies should be performed by objective, i.e., task-based, measures of image quality (IQ).  However, the objective evaluation of deep learning-based image formation technologies remains largely lacking, despite the breakneck speed at which they are being developed. As such, there is an ever-growing collection of methods whose utility and trustworthiness remains largely unknown.  Moreover, such methods have the capability to ‘hallucinate’ false structures, which is of significant concern in medical imaging applications. In this work, we report studies in which the performance of deep a learning-based image restoration method is objectively assessed. The performance of the ideal observer (IO) and common linear numerical observers are quantified, and detection efficiencies are computed to assess the potential impact of deep learning on signal detection performance in this application. The numerical results indicate that, in the cases considered, the application of a deep image formation network can result in a loss of task-relevant information in the image, despite improvement in traditional computer-vision metrics. We also demonstrate that traditional and objective IQ measures can vary in opposite ways as a function of network depth. In a second study, we assess the quality of synthetic images produced by deep generative models and demonstrate how traditional IQ measures used in the field of computer vision can be inadequate. These results highlight the need for the objective evaluation of IQ for deep learning technologies for biomedical imaging and may suggest future avenues for improving the effectiveness of biomedical imaging applications.  

Contact name: Jeanne N'Diaye
Contact email: jndiaye@illinois.edu

Two graduate students will present their research at the final Beckman Graduate Student Seminar of the fall semester: Hao Yang and Rachel Nixon. The event takes place Wednesday, December 6, 2023, at noon in 5602 Beckman Institute. 

Lunch will be provided to registered participants.

Contact name: Elena Romanova
Contact email: romanova@illinois.edu

Join us at noon on Wednesdays this fall for yoga with a view! All sessions are free and will be held in Beckman's fifth-floor tower room. All are welcome to bring their own mat! 

Contact name: Margaret Browne Huntt
Contact email: mbrowne@illinois.edu

Join the Beckman Institute and Cancer Center at Illinois for a viewing of Tale of Two Labs. Popcorn will be provided.

Contact name: Stacy Olson
Contact email: srolson@illinois.edu
Contact phone: 217-244-8373

Beckman Institute Interim Director Cathy Murphy will share updates about the director search, new faculty and staff, the evolution of Beckman working groups to communities, and more. If you have a question you'd like Director Murphy to answer, please submit it in advance via this form: https://forms.illinois.edu/sec/857477652.

Contact name: Mollie Stevens
Contact email: mollie@illinois.edu
Contact phone: 217-244-2603

Join your colleagues this fall for informal conversation and coffee in the Beckman Center Atrium.

This Gather in the Atrium Series will be from 10-10:30 a.m. every Tuesday.

Contact name: Elena Romanova
Contact email: romanova@illinois.edu

Join us at noon on Wednesdays this fall for yoga with a view! All sessions are free and will be held in Beckman's fifth-floor tower room. All are welcome to bring their own mat! 

Contact name: Mollie Stevens
Contact email: mollie@illinois.edu
Contact phone: 217-244-2603

Join your colleagues this fall for informal conversation and coffee in the Beckman Center Atrium.

This Gather in the Atrium Series will be from 10-10:30 a.m. every Tuesday.

Contact name: Mollie Stevens
Contact email: mollie@illinois.edu
Contact phone: 12172442603

Join members of the Beckman community for a special winter edition of coffee and treats in the Beckman Atrium.