Francesco di Ciò is a graduate student at UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.
He holds a degree in Techniques in Medical Diagnostic Imaging and Radiotherapy from Tor Vergata University.
Francesco has experience with diffusion MRI, structural connectivity, and graph theoretical analysis in studying brain networks in various pathologies.
His current research involves multivariate analysis to examine the relationship between decoding information in the medial prefrontal cortex and overall BOLD signal levels.
Disruption of structural brain networks in Primary Open Angle Glaucoma
DOI: 10.1109/EMBC44109.2020.9175417
Diffusional Kurtosis Imaging of White Matter Degeneration in Glaucoma
DOI: 10.3390/jcm9103122
Reorganization of the structural connectome in Primary Open Angle Glaucoma
Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) have been previously used to explore white matter related to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. While DTI and DKI suffer from low specificity, the Combined Hindered and Restricted Model of Diffusion (CHARMED) provides additional microstructural specificity. We used these three models to evaluate microstructural differences between 35 HIV-positive patients without neurological impairment and 20 healthy controls who...
Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has been used to explore changes in the brain of subjects with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. However, DTI notoriously suffers from low specificity. Neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging (NODDI) is a compartmental model able to provide specific microstructural information with additional sensitivity/specificity. In this study we use both the NODDI and the DTI models to evaluate microstructural differences between 35 HIV-positive patients...
CONCLUSION: Our study demonstrates that rs-fMRI combined with advanced graph theoretical analysis and disruption indices is able to detect early and subtle functional changes of brain networks in HIV patients.
Primary open angle Glaucoma (POAG) is one of the most common causes of permanent blindness in the world. Recent studies have suggested the hypothesis that POAG is also a central nervous system disorder which may result in additional (i.e., extra-ocular) involvement. The aim of this study is to assess possible structural, whole-brain connectivity alterations in POAG patients. We evaluated 23 POAG patients and 15 healthy controls by combining multi-shell diffusion weighted imaging, multi-shell,...
Glaucoma is an optic neuropathy characterized by death of retinal ganglion cells and loss of their axons, progressively leading to blindness. Recently, glaucoma has been conceptualized as a more diffuse neurodegenerative disorder involving the optic nerve and also the entire brain. Consistently, previous studies have used a variety of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques and described widespread changes in the grey and white matter of patients. Diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) provides...