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

Luca Canalini, Jan Klein, Dorothea Miller, and Ron Kikinis. 2019. “Segmentation-based Registration of Ultrasound Volumes for Glioma Resection in Image-guided Neurosurgery.” Int J Comput Assist Radiol Surg.Abstract

PURPOSE: In image-guided surgery for glioma removal, neurosurgeons usually plan the resection on images acquired before surgery and use them for guidance during the subsequent intervention. However, after the surgical procedure has begun, the preplanning images become unreliable due to the brain shift phenomenon, caused by modifications of anatomical structures and imprecisions in the neuronavigation system. To obtain an updated view of the resection cavity, a solution is to collect intraoperative data, which can be additionally acquired at different stages of the procedure in order to provide a better understanding of the resection. A spatial mapping between structures identified in subsequent acquisitions would be beneficial. We propose here a fully automated segmentation-based registration method to register ultrasound (US) volumes acquired at multiple stages of neurosurgery. METHODS: We chose to segment sulci and falx cerebri in US volumes, which remain visible during resection. To automatically segment these elements, first we trained a convolutional neural network on manually annotated structures in volumes acquired before the opening of the dura mater and then we applied it to segment corresponding structures in different surgical phases. Finally, the obtained masks are used to register US volumes acquired at multiple resection stages. RESULTS: Our method reduces the mean target registration error (mTRE) between volumes acquired before the opening of the dura mater and during resection from 3.49 mm (± 1.55 mm) to 1.36 mm (± 0.61 mm). Moreover, the mTRE between volumes acquired before opening the dura mater and at the end of the resection is reduced from 3.54 mm (± 1.75 mm) to 2.05 mm (± 1.12 mm). CONCLUSION: The segmented structures demonstrated to be good candidates to register US volumes acquired at different neurosurgical phases. Therefore, our solution can compensate brain shift in neurosurgical procedures involving intraoperative US data.

Filip Szczepankiewicz, Scott Hoge, and Carl-Fredrik Westin. 7/2019. “Linear, Planar and Spherical Tensor-valued Diffusion MRI Data by Free Waveform Encoding in Healthy Brain, Water, Oil and Liquid Crystals.” Data Brief, 25, Pp. 104208.Abstract

Recently, several biophysical models and signal representations have been proposed for microstructure imaging based on tensor-valued, or multidimensional, diffusion MRI. The acquisition of the necessary data requires non-conventional pulse sequences, and data is therefore not available to the wider diffusion MRI community. To facilitate exploration and development of analysis techniques based on tensor-valued diffusion encoding, we share a comprehensive data set acquired in a healthy human brain. The data encompasses diffusion weighted images using linear, planar and spherical diffusion tensor encoding at multiple b-values and diffusion encoding directions. We also supply data acquired in several phantoms that may support validation. The data is hosted by GitHub: https://github.com/filip-szczepankiewicz/Szczepankiewicz_DIB_2019.

Fabio Nery, Filip Szczepankiewicz, Leevi Kerkelä, Matt G Hall, Enrico Kaden, Isky Gordon, David L Thomas, and Chris A Clark. 6/2019. “In vivo Demonstration of Microscopic Anisotropy in the Human Kidney using Multidimensional Diffusion MRI.” Magn Reson Med.Abstract

PURPOSE: To demonstrate the feasibility of multidimensional diffusion MRI to probe and quantify microscopic fractional anisotropy (µFA) in human kidneys in vivo. METHODS: Linear tensor encoded (LTE) and spherical tensor encoded (STE) renal diffusion MRI scans were performed in 10 healthy volunteers. Respiratory triggering and image registration were used to minimize motion artefacts during the acquisition. Kidney cortex-medulla were semi-automatically segmented based on fractional anisotropy (FA) values. A model-free analysis of LTE and STE signal dependence on b-value in the renal cortex and medulla was performed. Subsequently, µFA was estimated using a single-shell approach. Finally, a comparison of conventional FA and µFA is shown. RESULTS: The hallmark effect of µFA (divergence of LTE and STE signal with increasing b-value) was observed in all subjects. A statistically significant difference between LTE and STE signal was found in the cortex and medulla, starting from b = 750 s/mm and b = 500 s/mm , respectively. This difference was maximal at the highest b-value sampled (b = 1000 s/mm ) which suggests that relatively high b-values are required for µFA mapping in the kidney compared to conventional FA. Cortical and medullary µFA were, respectively, 0.53 ± 0.09 and 0.65 ± 0.05, both respectively higher than conventional FA (0.19 ± 0.02 and 0.40 ± 0.02). CONCLUSION: The feasibility of combining LTE and STE diffusion MRI to probe and quantify µFA in human kidneys is demonstrated for the first time. By doing so, we show that novel microstructure information-not accessible by conventional diffusion encoding-can be probed by multidimensional diffusion MRI. We also identify relevant technical limitations that warrant further development of the technique for body MRI.

Tonya M Gilbert, Nicole R Zürcher, Mary C Catanese, Chieh-En J Tseng, Maria A Di Biase, Amanda E Lyall, Baileigh G Hightower, Anjali J Parmar, Anisha Bhanot, Christine J Wu, Matthew L Hibert, Minhae Kim, Umar Mahmood, Steven M Stufflebeam, Frederick A Schroeder, Changning Wang, Joshua L Roffman, Daphne J Holt, Douglas N Greve, Ofer Pasternak, Marek Kubicki, Hsiao-Ying Wey, and Jacob M Hooker. 2019. “Neuroepigenetic Signatures of Age and Sex in the Living Human Brain.” Nat Commun, 10, 1, Pp. 2945.Abstract

Age- and sex-related alterations in gene transcription have been demonstrated, however the underlying mechanisms are unresolved. Neuroepigenetic pathways regulate gene transcription in the brain. Here, we measure in vivo expression of the epigenetic enzymes, histone deacetylases (HDACs), across healthy human aging and between sexes using [C]Martinostat positron emission tomography (PET) neuroimaging (n = 41). Relative HDAC expression increases with age in cerebral white matter, and correlates with age-associated disruptions in white matter microstructure. A post mortem study confirmed that HDAC1 and HDAC2 paralogs are elevated in white matter tissue from elderly donors. There are also sex-specific in vivo HDAC expression differences in brain regions associated with emotion and memory, including the amygdala and hippocampus. Hippocampus and white matter HDAC expression negatively correlates with emotion regulation skills (n = 23). Age and sex are associated with HDAC expression in vivo, which could drive age- and sex-related transcriptional changes and impact human behavior.

Markus D Schirmer, Adrian V Dalca, Ramesh Sridharan, Anne-Katrin Giese, Kathleen L Donahue, Marco J Nardin, Steven JT Mocking, Elissa C McIntosh, Petrea Frid, Johan Wasselius, John W Cole, Lukas Holmegaard, Christina Jern, Jordi Jimenez-Conde, Robin Lemmens, Arne G Lindgren, James F Meschia, Jaume Roquer, Tatjana Rundek, Ralph L Sacco, Reinhold Schmidt, Pankaj Sharma, Agnieszka Slowik, Vincent Thijs, Daniel Woo, Achala Vagal, Huichun Xu, Steven J Kittner, Patrick F McArdle, Braxton D Mitchell, Jonathan Rosand, Bradford B Worrall, Ona Wu, Polina Golland, Natalia S Rost, and Natalia S Rost. 5/2019. “White Matter Hyperintensity Quantification in Large-scale Clinical Acute Ischemic Stroke Cohorts - The MRI-GENIE Study.” Neuroimage Clin, 23, Pp. 101884.Abstract

White matter hyperintensity (WMH) burden is a critically important cerebrovascular phenotype linked to prediction of diagnosis and prognosis of diseases, such as acute ischemic stroke (AIS). However, current approaches to its quantification on clinical MRI often rely on time intensive manual delineation of the disease on T2 fluid attenuated inverse recovery (FLAIR), which hinders high-throughput analyses such as genetic discovery. In this work, we present a fully automated pipeline for quantification of WMH in clinical large-scale studies of AIS. The pipeline incorporates automated brain extraction, intensity normalization and WMH segmentation using spatial priors. We first propose a brain extraction algorithm based on a fully convolutional deep learning architecture, specifically designed for clinical FLAIR images. We demonstrate that our method for brain extraction outperforms two commonly used and publicly available methods on clinical quality images in a set of 144 subject scans across 12 acquisition centers, based on dice coefficient (median 0.95; inter-quartile range 0.94-0.95; p < 0.01) and Pearson correlation of total brain volume (r = 0.90). Subsequently, we apply it to the large-scale clinical multi-site MRI-GENIE study (N = 2783) and identify a decrease in total brain volume of -2.4 cc/year. Additionally, we show that the resulting total brain volumes can successfully be used for quality control of image preprocessing. Finally, we obtain WMH volumes by building on an existing automatic WMH segmentation algorithm that delineates and distinguishes between different cerebrovascular pathologies. The learning method mimics expert knowledge of the spatial distribution of the WMH burden using a convolutional auto-encoder. This enables successful computation of WMH volumes of 2533 clinical AIS patients. We utilize these results to demonstrate the increase of WMH burden with age (0.950 cc/year) and show that single site estimates can be biased by the number of subjects recruited.

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

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