Dr Marcela Cespedes

 

Doctor of Philosophy for thesis: Detection of Longitudinal Brain Atrophy Patterns Consistent with Progression Towards Alzheimer’s Disease

Bachelor of Mathematical Sciences (major in statistics) with Honours, University of South Australia.

PhD candidate at QUT & CSIRO.

Research interests

• Bayesian hierarchical models
• Aerial statistics, boundary detection and estimation of network connectivity (wombling)
• Regression trees & ensemble methods (Random forests, bagging, boosting, Bayesian additive models, etc.)
• Image processing (RGB, MRI & PET)
• Spatio-temporal methods applied on neuroimaging
• Cereal plant biomass modelling

Project description

Title: Detection of longitudinal brain atrophy patterns consistent with progression towards Alzheimer’s disease.

Affiliation: QUT & Australian Imaging, Biomarker and Lifestyle Flagship longitudinal study of ageing (CSIRO) & ACEMS.

Neuroimaging technology has enabled us to see in 3D the inner workings of the human brain; in functional (while performing a task), resting state (not performing a task) as well as biochemical processes which are indicators of disease pathology. In this project my aim is to model neurodegeneration in elderly individuals in an effort to capture the deteriorating stages of both healthy ageing as well as those on Alzheimer’s disease pathway. The outcome of this project will detect patterns and/or groups of individuals who are/or potentially may be heading towards dementia.

Publications

J. Cai & M. Cespedes. Plant temperature measurement and analysis from infrared images, In Proceedings of the 27th Conference on Image and Vision Computing New Zealand, IVCNZ 2012, pages 406-411, New York, NY, USA, 2012. ISBN 978-1-4503-1473-2. doi: 10.1145/2425836.2425914. URL

Cespedes, M.I., Fripp, J., McGree, J.M., Drovandi, C.C., Mengersen, K. and Doecke, J.D., 2017. Comparisons of neurodegeneration over time between healthy ageing and Alzheimer’s disease cohorts via Bayesian inference. BMJ open, 7(2), p.e012174. URL

Cespedes, M.I., McGree, J.M., Drovandi, C.C., Mengersen, K., Fripp, J. and Doecke, J.D., Alzheimer’s disease cortex connectivity networks with increasing disease burden. (in prep)

Cespedes, M.I., McGree, J.M., Drovandi, C.C., Mengersen, K., Fripp, J. and Doecke, J.D., Bayesian hierarchical models detect differences in cortical thickness and networks along progression towards Alzheimer’s disease. (in prep)

Conferences

M. Cespedes, J. McGree, C. Drovandi, K. Mengersen, J. Fripp and J. Doecke. Approaches to detect spatial patterns of neurodegeneration consistent with progression towards Alzheimer’s disease. In Proceedings of the 23rd Australian Statistical Conference (ASC), Canberra, Australia, 5-8 December 2016.

M. Cespedes, J. McGree, C. Drovandi, K. Mengersen, J. Doecke and J. Fripp. Spatio-temporal cortical thickness models: patterns of neurodegeneration.  In Proceedings of the 11th International Workshop for the Australasian Chapter of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA) and the annual meeting of the Bayesian Statistics section of the Statistical Society of Australia, Inc. (SSAI) – Bayes on the Beach, Gold Coast, Australia, 7-9th December 2015. URL

M. Cespedes, J. McGree, C. Drovandi, K. Mengersen, J. Doecke and J. Fripp. Application of decision trees on neuroimaging data: Modelling multiple biomarkers to better understand Alzheimer’s disease progression. In Proceedings of the Young Statisticians Conference 2015, Adelaide, Australia, 5-6 February 2015. URL

M. Cespedes, J. McGree, C. Drovandi, K. Mengersen, J. Doecke and J. Fripp. Modelling dynamics of brain atrophy via Bayesian mixed effect regression in healthy aging and Alzheimer’s disease cohorts. In Proceedings of the 10th International Workshop for the Australasian Chapter of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA) and the annual meeting of the Bayesian Statistics section of the Statistical Society of Australia, Inc. (SSAI) – Bayes on the Beach, Gold Coast, Australia 10-12 November 2014. URL

J. Cai & M.Cespedes. Generalised linear model and analysis of cereal plant biomass. In Proceedings of the 20th International Congress on Modelling and Simulation, Adelaide, Australia 1-6 December 2013. URL

Contact details

• marcela.cespedes@hdr.student.qut.edu.au
• marcela.cespedes@csiro.au
• GitHub repository