Martha E. Shenton, PhD

The broad goal of Dr. Shenton’s research program has been to apply new imaging techniques to the study of schizophrenia in order to determine and to localize brain abnormalities which likely underlie the symptoms and disordered behavior observed in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. Accordingly, this investigator has focused her research efforts in trying to define and to localize further brain abnormalities in the temporal lobe in patients afflicted with schizophrenia. Newly developed image processing techniques, originally developed for the analysis of multichannel remote sensing data (i.e., satellites), have been employed to analyze high spatial resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans (1.5-mm and 2-mm slices). The application of these image processing techniques to the investigation of schizophrenia has been particularly helpful because these techniques not only exploit more fully information contained in MR scans, but they also offer more precise and accurate measurements, factors important to schizophrenia where brain abnormalities are often more subtle, and harder to detect, than for other pathophysiological disorders, and where, consequently, precise and accurate measurements become that much more essential.