Personalized brain-injury maps for children and teens
Personalized Profiles of Pathology in Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury
This project builds MRI-based tools to create personalized maps of brain injury for children and teens and link those maps to symptoms and recovery over time.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R01 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Utah State Higher Education System--University of Utah NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Salt Lake City, United States) |
| Project ID | NIH-11247523 on NIH RePORTER |
What this research studies
If your child has had a head injury, researchers would use their MRI scans together with age-matched brain templates to make detailed, individual maps of where the damage is. The workflow includes automatic lesion outlining, comparing lesion locations to specific symptoms across many children, and measuring how brain structure and networks change over time with follow-up scans. The team also uses brain connectivity data from healthy people to model how injury effects might spread through brain networks and checks those predictions with later scans. The goal is to give a clearer, personalized picture of how an injury relates to a child’s symptoms and recovery.
Who could benefit from this research
Good fit: Children and adolescents who have experienced a traumatic brain injury and can safely undergo MRI scans, including those able to return for follow-up imaging, would be ideal candidates.
Not a fit: People who do not have traumatic brain injury, adults outside the pediatric focus, or anyone who cannot have an MRI (for example due to incompatible implants) are unlikely to benefit directly from this work.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, this could help doctors pinpoint which brain areas are driving a child’s symptoms and guide more personalized monitoring and rehabilitation plans.
How similar studies have performed: Related imaging methods have shown promise in adults with TBI but have been less tested in children, so this approach applies promising adult techniques to a pediatric population and adds longitudinal validation.
Where this research is happening
Salt Lake City, United States
- Utah State Higher Education System--University of Utah — Salt Lake City, United States (Active)
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Dennis, Emily Larsen — Utah State Higher Education System--University of Utah
- Study coordinator: Dennis, Emily Larsen
About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page below.