Design and Rationale for Examining Neuroimaging Genetics in Ischemic Stroke: The MRI-GENIE Study

Joseph M Gullett, Andrew O'Shea, Damon G Lamb, Eric C Porges, Deirdre M O'Shea, Ofer Pasternak, Ronald A Cohen, and Adam J Woods. 10/2020. “The Association of White Matter Free Water With Cognition in Older Adults.” Neuroimage, 219, Pp. 117040.Abstract

BACKGROUND: Extracellular free water within cerebral white matter tissue has been shown to increase with age and pathology, yet the cognitive consequences of free water in typical aging prior to the development of neurodegenerative disease remains unclear. Understanding the contribution of free water to cognitive function in older adults may provide important insight into the neural mechanisms of the cognitive aging process. METHODS: A diffusion-weighted MRI measure of extracellular free water as well as a commonly used diffusion MRI metric (fractional anisotropy) along nine bilateral white matter pathways were examined for their relationship with cognitive function assessed by the NIH Toolbox Cognitive Battery in 47 older adults (mean age = 74.4 years, SD = 5.4 years, range = 65-85 years). Probabilistic tractography at the 99th percentile level of probability (Tracts Constrained by Underlying Anatomy; TRACULA) was utilized to produce the pathways on which microstructural characteristics were overlaid and examined for their contribution to cognitive function independent of age, education, and gender. RESULTS: When examining the 99th percentile probability core white matter pathway derived from TRACULA, poorer fluid cognitive ability was related to higher mean free water values across the angular and cingulum bundles of the cingulate gyrus, as well as the corticospinal tract and the superior longitudinal fasciculus. There was no relationship between cognition and mean FA or free water-adjusted FA across the 99th percentile core white matter pathway. Crystallized cognitive ability was not associated with any of the diffusion measures. When examining cognitive domains comprising the NIH Toolbox Fluid Cognition index relationships with these white matter pathways, mean free water demonstrated strong hemispheric and functional specificity for cognitive performance, whereas mean FA was not related to age or cognition across the 99th percentile pathway. CONCLUSIONS: Extracellular free water within white matter appears to increase with normal aging, and higher values are associated with significantly lower fluid but not crystallized cognitive functions. When using TRACULA to estimate the core of a white matter pathway, a higher degree of free water appears to be highly specific to the pathways associated with memory, working memory, and speeded decision-making performance, whereas no such relationship existed with FA. These data suggest that free water may play an important role in the cognitive aging process, and may serve as a stronger and more specific indicator of early cognitive decline than traditional diffusion MRI measures, such as FA.

Björn Lampinen, Filip Szczepankiewicz, Johan Mårtensson, Danielle van Westen, Oskar Hansson, Carl-Fredrik Westin, and Markus Nilsson. 9/2020. “Towards Unconstrained Compartment Modeling in White Matter Using Diffusion-Relaxation MRI with Tensor-Valued Diffusion Encoding.” Magn Reson Med, 84, 3, Pp. 1605-23.Abstract

PURPOSE: To optimize diffusion-relaxation MRI with tensor-valued diffusion encoding for precise estimation of compartment-specific fractions, diffusivities, and T values within a two-compartment model of white matter, and to explore the approach in vivo. METHODS: Sampling protocols featuring different b-values (b), b-tensor shapes (b ), and echo times (TE) were optimized using Cramér-Rao lower bounds (CRLB). Whole-brain data were acquired in children, adults, and elderly with white matter lesions. Compartment fractions, diffusivities, and T values were estimated in a model featuring two microstructural compartments represented by a "stick" and a "zeppelin." RESULTS: Precise parameter estimates were enabled by sampling protocols featuring seven or more "shells" with unique b/b /TE-combinations. Acquisition times were approximately 15 minutes. In white matter of adults, the "stick" compartment had a fraction of approximately 0.5 and, compared with the "zeppelin" compartment, featured lower isotropic diffusivities (0.6 vs. 1.3 μm /ms) but higher T values (85 vs. 65 ms). Children featured lower "stick" fractions (0.4). White matter lesions exhibited high "zeppelin" isotropic diffusivities (1.7 μm /ms) and T values (150 ms). CONCLUSIONS: Diffusion-relaxation MRI with tensor-valued diffusion encoding expands the set of microstructure parameters that can be precisely estimated and therefore increases their specificity to biological quantities.

Kyriakos Dalamagkas, Magdalini Tsintou, Yogesh Rathi, Lauren J O'Donnell, Ofer Pasternak, Xue Gong, Anne Zhu, Peter Savadjiev, George M Papadimitriou, Marek Kubicki, Edward H Yeterian, and Nikos Makris. 6/2020. “Individual Variations of the Human Corticospinal Tract and Its Hand-Related Motor Fibers Using Diffusion MRI Tractography.” Brain Imaging Behav, 14, 3, Pp. 696-714.Abstract

The corticospinal tract (CST) is one of the most well studied tracts in human neuroanatomy. Its clinical significance can be demonstrated in many notable traumatic conditions and diseases such as stroke, spinal cord injury (SCI) or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). With the advent of diffusion MRI and tractography the computational representation of the human CST in a 3D model became available. However, the representation of the entire CST and, specifically, the hand motor area has remained elusive. In this paper we propose a novel method, using manually drawn ROIs based on robustly identifiable neuroanatomic structures to delineate the entire CST and isolate its hand motor representation as well as to estimate their variability and generate a database of their volume, length and biophysical parameters. Using 37 healthy human subjects we performed a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the CST and the hand-related motor fiber tracts (HMFTs). Finally, we have created variability heat maps from 37 subjects for both the aforementioned tracts, which could be utilized as a reference for future studies with clinical focus to explore neuropathology in both trauma and disease states.

Andrey Fedorov, Matthew Hancock, David Clunie, Mathias Brochhausen, Jonathan Bona, Justin Kirby, John Freymann, Steve Pieper, Hugo JWL Aerts, Ron Kikinis, and Fred Prior. 8/2020. “DICOM Re-encoding of Volumetrically Annotated Lung Imaging Database Consortium (LIDC) Nodules.” Med Phys.Abstract

PURPOSE: The dataset contains annotations for lung nodules collected by the Lung Imaging Data Consortium and Image Database Resource Initiative (LIDC) stored as standard DICOM objects. The annotations accompany a collection of computed tomography (CT) scans for over 1000 subjects annotated by multiple expert readers, and correspond to "nodules ≥ 3 mm", defined as any lesion considered to be a nodule with greatest in-plane dimension in the range 3-30 mm regardless of presumed histology. The present dataset aims to simplify reuse of the data with the readily available tools, and is targeted towards researchers interested in the analysis of lung CT images. ACQUISITION AND VALIDATION METHODS: Open source tools were utilized to parse the project-specific XML representation of LIDC-IDRI annotations and save the result as standard DICOM objects. Validation procedures focused on establishing compliance of the resulting objects with the standard, consistency of the data between the DICOM and project-specific representation, and evaluating interoperability with the existing tools. DATA FORMAT AND USAGE NOTES: The dataset utilizes DICOM Segmentation objects for storing annotations of the lung nodules, and DICOM Structured Reporting objects for communicating qualitative evaluations (nine attributes) and quantitative measurements (three attributes) associated with the nodules. The total of 875 subjects contain 6859 nodule annotations. Clustering of the neighboring annotations resulted in 2651 distinct nodules. The data are available in TCIA at https://doi.org/10.7937/TCIA.2018.h7umfurq. POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS: The standardized dataset maintains the content of the original contribution of the LIDC-IDRI consortium, and should be helpful in developing automated tools for characterization of lung lesions and image phenotyping. In addition to those properties, the representation of the present dataset makes it more FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) for the research community, and enables its integration with other standardized data collections.

Alex Zwanenburg, Martin Vallières, Mahmoud A Abdalah, Hugo JWL Aerts, Vincent Andrearczyk, Aditya Apte, Saeed Ashrafinia, Spyridon Bakas, Roelof J Beukinga, Ronald Boellaard, Marta Bogowicz, Luca Boldrini, Irène Buvat, Gary JR Cook, Christos Davatzikos, Adrien Depeursinge, Marie-Charlotte Desseroit, Nicola Dinapoli, Cuong Viet Dinh, Sebastian Echegaray, Issam El Naqa, Andriy Y Fedorov, Roberto Gatta, Robert J Gillies, Vicky Goh, Michael Götz, Matthias Guckenberger, Sung Min Ha, Mathieu Hatt, Fabian Isensee, Philippe Lambin, Stefan Leger, Ralph TH Leijenaar, Jacopo Lenkowicz, Fiona Lippert, Are Losnegård, Klaus H Maier-Hein, Olivier Morin, Henning Müller, Sandy Napel, Christophe Nioche, Fanny Orlhac, Sarthak Pati, Elisabeth AG Pfaehler, Arman Rahmim, Arvind UK Rao, Jonas Scherer, Muhammad Musib Siddique, Nanna M Sijtsema, Jairo Socarras Fernandez, Emiliano Spezi, Roel JHM Steenbakkers, Stephanie Tanadini-Lang, Daniela Thorwarth, Esther GC Troost, Taman Upadhaya, Vincenzo Valentini, Lisanne V van Dijk, Joost van Griethuysen, Floris HP van Velden, Philip Whybra, Christian Richter, and Steffen Löck. 5/2020. “The Image Biomarker Standardization Initiative: Standardized Quantitative Radiomics for High-Throughput Image-based Phenotyping.” Radiology, 295, 2, Pp. 328-38.Abstract

Background Radiomic features may quantify characteristics present in medical imaging. However, the lack of standardized definitions and validated reference values have hampered clinical use. Purpose To standardize a set of 174 radiomic features. Materials and Methods Radiomic features were assessed in three phases. In phase I, 487 features were derived from the basic set of 174 features. Twenty-five research teams with unique radiomics software implementations computed feature values directly from a digital phantom, without any additional image processing. In phase II, 15 teams computed values for 1347 derived features using a CT image of a patient with lung cancer and predefined image processing configurations. In both phases, consensus among the teams on the validity of tentative reference values was measured through the frequency of the modal value and classified as follows: less than three matches, weak; three to five matches, moderate; six to nine matches, strong; 10 or more matches, very strong. In the final phase (phase III), a public data set of multimodality images (CT, fluorine 18 fluorodeoxyglucose PET, and T1-weighted MRI) from 51 patients with soft-tissue sarcoma was used to prospectively assess reproducibility of standardized features. Results Consensus on reference values was initially weak for 232 of 302 features (76.8%) at phase I and 703 of 1075 features (65.4%) at phase II. At the final iteration, weak consensus remained for only two of 487 features (0.4%) at phase I and 19 of 1347 features (1.4%) at phase II. Strong or better consensus was achieved for 463 of 487 features (95.1%) at phase I and 1220 of 1347 features (90.6%) at phase II. Overall, 169 of 174 features were standardized in the first two phases. In the final validation phase (phase III), most of the 169 standardized features could be excellently reproduced (166 with CT; 164 with PET; and 164 with MRI). Conclusion A set of 169 radiomics features was standardized, which enabled verification and calibration of different radiomics software. © RSNA, 2020 See also the editorial by Kuhl and Truhn in this issue.

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Design and Rationale for Examining Neuroimaging Genetics in Ischemic Stroke: The MRI-GENIE Study

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