What does the Muse CD cover have to do with Medical Imaging?

This is Muse CD cover of their 6th album: "The 2nd Law":

Indeed, this image is truly beautiful and remarkable. It is an image of the white matter fibers in the brain obtained with diffusion MRI (link). The image was obtained by the Human Connectome Project, which is a 5-year project funded by NIH to find the networks of the human brain. These networks will show how our brain communicates between different regions and give insight about the anatomical and functional organization of the brain. The project also has the goal to produce data that will help understanding brain diseases such as Alzheimer's disease. The data is available to the scientific community.

So how do you obtain these networks? By applying computer algorithms to data obtained with different neuroimaging techniques: MRI, fMRI, diffusion MRI among others. These computer algorithms come from the graph theory. The application of these algorithms is extremely useful, because the algorithms analyze the network, reduce the complexity, find similarities and differences between different networks.

A very nice science article for researchers not familiar with the topic:
http://www.sciencemag.org/site/products/lst_20130118.xhtml

To know more about obtaining diffusion MRI data or network methods, look into these two articles:
- Hasan, K., Walimuni, I., Abid, H., & Hahn, K. (2011). A review of diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging computational methods and software tools Computers in Biology and Medicine, 41 (12), 1062-1072 DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2010.10.008
- Kaiser, M. (2011). A tutorial in connectome analysis: Topological and spatial features of brain networks NeuroImage, 57 (3), 892-907 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.05.025

Connectome - understanding the human brain

Science has published an interesting article about the lack of understanding of the human brain. We have to understand what is the normal brain and the normal "connectome" to be able to distinguish it from dysfunctional brains. The different scales to approach its understanding are described. As you can imagine, I am a fan of the MRI approach to understand the brain. The article is very clear and can be read by non-medical imaging specialists, although the knowledge of science is probably necessary.

http://www.sciencemag.org/site/products/lst_20130118.xhtml

And to connect with yesterday's post, a scientist states that thanks to a "worldwide shortage of liquid helium.", the high-field MRI is not working, because "To cool this huge magnet we need something like 40,000 L of liquid helium, and we can't get it.".