Sebastian Urchs

Sebastian is a neuroscience PhD student in the Integrated Program in Neuroscience at McGill University …

Sebastian is a neuroscience PhD student in the Integrated Program in Neuroscience at McGill University where he is currently completing his degree under the supervision of Drs. Pierre Bellec and Alan Evans. Sebastian’s work aims to describe the heterogeneity of brain endophenotypes in autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders, a key challenge for developing a better understanding and diagnosis of these conditions. He uses large clinical brain imaging datasets to identify subtypes of functional brain connectivity that are strongly associated with autistic symptoms.

Visual control of brain imaging data is a critical step to ensure data quality. This is a laborious task, particularly for the large datasets needed to build clinically predictive imaging markers. Every lab has practices in place to ensure data quality, but there is no consensus protocol that reflects the current best practice. Together with a team of developers I am working on dashQC, an interactive, browser based dashboard that facilitates and standardizes visual quality control through an interactive workflow. With the help of CONP, I will extend this tool to work with cortical surface data, and establish current best practices for visual quality control by consulting with the imaging community and implementing them in dashQC.