bioimaging sciences | faculty | Constable R. Todd Constable, Ph.D. Professor of Diagnostic Radiology and Neurosurgery Ph.D. Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, 1990 Yale University, School of Medicine Department of Diagnostic Radiology todd.constable@yale.edu

Firstly, I am involved in extensive research developing functional MR imaging methods for studying brain activity. With this new science, activation maps are produced using MR pulse sequences sensitized to blood oxygenation levels. Such maps depict regions of the brain which activate upon execution of a specific task. New MR methods must be developed and tailored to suit the many cognitive studies which can be undertaken with such sensitivity to brain activation. The development of MRI pulse sequences, post-processing techniques and the design of neurologic studies on patients and normal volunteers are all essential elements in this multidisciplinary field.

Using these methods we can then begin to improve our understanding of language and memory processing systems in the brain. We perform studies on both control subjects (Normal volunteers) and Patients who are candidates for Neurosurgical intervention. Such mapping can help guide the Neurosurgeon to avoid areas which are critical for language or memory processing in an effort to reduce the chance of a post-operative deficit. These studies in patients also provide a means of validating the fMRI techniques through comparisons with other modalities (ERP, cortical stimulation with implanted electrodes, and Wada Testing), and also provide a model for studying the brains response to injury by imaging patients both pre- and post- surgery.

I am also interested in the development MRI as a tool for evaluating how well the human heart is working. This includes developing new MR pulse sequences for collecting quantitative information on the beating heart. The quantitative information details such parameters as heart wall velocity, acceleration, twist, strain and stress, to name a few. Such parameters will be able to provide information on the extent of damage to a heart when a heart attack occurs and will also be useful in the follow-up during treatment and post treatment.

Recent Publications

Skudlarski P., Constable R.T., Gore J.C., ROC Analysis of Statistical Methods Used in Functional MRI: Individual Subjects, NeuroImage, 9, 311-329, 1998.

Shaywitz S.E., Shaywitz B.A., Pugh K.R., Fulbright R.K., Skudlarski P., Mencl W.E., Constable R.T., Naftolin F., Palter S.F., Marchione K.E., Katz L., Shankweiler D.P., Fletcher J.M., Lacadie C., Keltz M., Gore J.C., Estrogen Alters Brain Activation Patterns in Postmenopausal Women During Working Memory Tasks, JAMA, 281, 1197-1202, 1999.

Constable R.T., Spencer D.D., Composite Image Formation in Z-Shimmed Functional MR Imaging, Magn. Reson. in Med., 42(1), 110-117, 1999.

Kang M., Constable R.T., Gore J.C., Avrutin S., An Event Related fMRI Study of Implicit Syntactic and Semantic Processing at the Phrasal Level, NeuroImage, 10, 555-561, 1999.

Shi P, Sinusas A, Constable RT, Duncan JS, Volumetric deformation analysis using mechanics based data fusion: applications in cardiac motion recovery, Int. J. Comput. Vision, 35(1): 65-85, 1999

Papademetris X, Shi P, Dione D, Sinusas AJ, Constable RT, Duncan JS, Recovery of soft tissue object deformation using biomechanical models, Inf. Proc. Med. Imaging, 352-357, 1999

Ni W., Constable R.T., Mencl E., Pugh KR, Fulbright RK, Shaywitz SE, Shaywitz BA, Gore JC, Shankweiler D, An Event-related Neuroimaging Study Distinguishing Form and Content in Sentence Processing, J. Cognitive Neuroscience, 12(1): 120-133, 2000.

Adcock R.A., Constable R.T., Gore J.C., Goldman-Rakic P.S., Functional neuroanatomy of executive processes involved in dual-task performance, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 97(7) 3567-3572, 2000.

Constable RT, Carpentier A, Pugh K, Westerveld M, Oszunar Y, Spencer DD, Investigation of the Human Hippocampal Formation using a Randomized-Event-Related Paradigm and Z-shimmed Functional MRI, NeuroImage, 12: 55-62, 2000.

Shi P, Sinusas A, Constable RT, Ritman E, Duncan JS, Point-tracked quantitative analysis of LV motion from 3D image sequences, IEEE Tran. Med. Imag., 19(1), 36-50, 2000.

Studholme C., Constable R.T., Duncan J.S., Accurate alignment of Functional EPI data to Anatomical MRI Physics Based Distortion Model, IEEE Trans. Med. Imaging, 19(11): 1115-1127, 2001.