Alyssa Zhu won the top prize at the University of Southern California's annual Grodins Symposium for her "groundbreaking" brain imaging research.
Her presentation, "The podium Curves For Harmonizing Multi-Site Regional MRI Metrics Across the Lifespan," focused on how brain MRI studies can be used to gauge the changes a brain can undergo because of disease or aging.
"Our goal was to create reference curves for white matter in the brain that could be used to gauge how someone of a particular age and sex compares to their peers, similar to standardized growth charts (height and weight) for babies and children," Zhu tells the Los Angeles Times.
Her work is based on diffusion MRI, which "allows us to assess the brain's white matter," she says.
"Unfortunately, the complexities of MRI, especially diffusion MRI, which allows us to assess the brain's white matter, have made it difficult to pool data and to create standardized measures between scanners," Zhu says.
"Our goal was to create reference curves for white matter in the brain that could be used to gauge how someone of a particular age and sex compares to their peers, similar to standardized growth charts (height and weight) for babies and children," she adds, per USC News.
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