Self-organizing features for regularized image standardization
To the girls in our family: my mom, who made learning a lifelong quest, my sister, who discovered the champion within. In celebration of our triple graduation, with a MS in political sciences, an MBA, and a PhD in computer sciences, at the turn of this millennium. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS During the course of my dissertation, I received tremendous support. Dr. John Harris deserves the best compliments for supervision. After I started working with him, a dissertation so boring and monstrous became a challenge, a quest, of which I enjoyed every minute. His technical judgement helped put a lot of quality into this work. I am greatly indebted for all his efforts. Dr. U«ur Hal²c² from Middle East Technical University was a big influence when I made the decision to pursue PhD. studies. I would like to thank her for being a wonderful role model. Dr. Dawn Bowers always helped in hardships, as a friend, mentor, and boss. I am grateful to Dr. Bruce Crosson for his support, and Dr. Richard Briggs for his valuable time spent in the collection of the brain images used in this study. I have learned a lot from them and I feel priviledged to have been a part of their research groups for a long time. During times when I needed anatomical guidance, Dr. Tiana Leonard was always available. I appreciate her patience in continually explaining to us engineers the extent of anatomical variability. By her help, I learned that the precision expected in brain anatomy by engineers is nonexistent. I am also indebted to Dr. Sartaj Sahni, who did not hesitate to take charge at a very difficult time. And I would like to thank Dr. Jose Principe for serving on my committee. v Some hidden heroes were also with me throughout this study. our graduate secretary, and Dr. Doug Dankel, our graduate coordinator, helped tremendously with official procedures and problems. As a last word, I would like to mention that completing my doctoral studies has been more of an emotional challenge than a technical one. Without the emotional support of my husband, my mom, my dad, my sister, and most importantly my son, Tu÷UD , would not have accomplished this feat. Erhan's perseverance, along with all my family's confidence, restored my willingness to fight back at difficult times.