Publications by Year: 2017

2017

Giese AK, Schirmer MD, Donahue KL, Cloonan L, Irie R, Winzeck S, Bouts MJRJ, McIntosh EC, Mocking SJ, Dalca A V, Sridharan R, Xu H, Frid P, Giralt-Steinhauer E, Holmegaard L, Roquer J, Wasselius J, Cole JW, McArdle PF, Broderick JP, Jimenez-Conde J, Jern C, Kissela BM, Kleindorfer DO, Lemmens R, Lindgren A, Meschia JF, Rundek T, Sacco RL, Schmidt R, Sharma P, Slowik A, Thijs V, Woo D, Worrall BB, Kittner SJ, Mitchell BD, Rosand J, Golland P, Wu O, Rost NS. Design and Rationale for Examining Neuroimaging Genetics in Ischemic Stroke: The MRI-GENIE Study. Neurol Genet. 2017;3(5):e180.

OBJECTIVE: To describe the design and rationale for the genetic analysis of acute and chronic cerebrovascular neuroimaging phenotypes detected on clinical MRI in patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS) within the scope of the MRI-GENetics Interface Exploration (MRI-GENIE) study. METHODS: MRI-GENIE capitalizes on the existing infrastructure of the Stroke Genetics Network (SiGN). In total, 12 international SiGN sites contributed MRIs of 3,301 patients with AIS. Detailed clinical phenotyping with the web-based Causative Classification of Stroke (CCS) system and genome-wide genotyping data were available for all participants. Neuroimaging analyses include the manual and automated assessments of established MRI markers. A high-throughput MRI analysis pipeline for the automated assessment of cerebrovascular lesions on clinical scans will be developed in a subset of scans for both acute and chronic lesions, validated against gold standard, and applied to all available scans. The extracted neuroimaging phenotypes will improve characterization of acute and chronic cerebrovascular lesions in ischemic stroke, including CCS subtypes, and their effect on functional outcomes after stroke. Moreover, genetic testing will uncover variants associated with acute and chronic MRI manifestations of cerebrovascular disease. CONCLUSIONS: The MRI-GENIE study aims to develop, validate, and distribute the MRI analysis platform for scans acquired as part of clinical care for patients with AIS, which will lead to (1) novel genetic discoveries in ischemic stroke, (2) strategies for personalized stroke risk assessment, and (3) personalized stroke outcome assessment.

Lipeng N, Rathi Y. Dynamic Regression for Partial Correlation and Causality Analysis of Functional Brain Networks. Int Conf Med Image Comput Comput Assist Interv. 2017;20(Pt1):365–72.

We propose a general dynamic regression framework for partial correlation and causality analysis of functional brain networks. Using the optimal prediction theory, we present the solution of the dynamic regression problem by minimizing the entropy of the associated stochastic process. We also provide the relation between the solutions and the linear dependence models of Geweke and Granger and derive novel expressions for computing partial correlation and causality using an optimal prediction filter with minimum error variance. We use the proposed dynamic framework to study the intrinsic partial correlation and causal- ity between seven different brain networks using resting state functional MRI (rsfMRI) data from the Human Connectome Project (HCP) and compare our results with those obtained from standard correlation and causality measures. The results show that our optimal prediction filter explains a significant portion of the variance in the rsfMRI data at low frequencies, unlike standard partial correlation analysis.

Fan Z, Weining W, Lipeng N, Gloria M, Deborah W, Gagoski B, Kiera S, M HH, Yang S, Weidong C, Rathi Y, O’Donnell LJ. Supra-Threshold Fiber Cluster Statistics for Data-Driven Whole Brain Tractography Analysis. Int Conf Med Image Comput Comput Assist Interv. 2017;20(Pt1):556–65.

This work presents a supra-threshold fiber cluster (STFC) analysis that leverages the whole brain fiber geometry to enhance sta- tistical group difference analysis. The proposed method consists of (1) a study-specific data-driven tractography parcellation to obtain white matter (WM) tract parcels according to the WM anatomy and (2) a nonparametric permutation-based STFC test to identify significant dif- ferences between study populations (e.g. disease and healthy). The basic idea of our method is that a WM parcel’s neighborhood (parcels with similar WM anatomy) can support the parcel’s statistical significance when correcting for multiple comparisons. The method is demonstrated by application to a multi-shell diffusion MRI dataset from 59 individuals, including 30 attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) patients and 29 healthy controls (HCs). Evaluations are conducted using both synthetic and real data. The results indicate that our STFC method gives greater sensitivity in finding group differences in WM tract parcels compared to several traditional multiple comparison correction methods.

Yip SSF, Parmar C, Blezek D, Estepar RSJ, Pieper S, Kim J, Aerts HJWL. Application of the 3D Slicer Chest Imaging Platform Segmentation Algorithm for Large Lung Nodule Delineation. PLoS One. 2017;12(6):e0178944.

PURPOSE: Accurate segmentation of lung nodules is crucial in the development of imaging biomarkers for predicting malignancy of the nodules. Manual segmentation is time consuming and affected by inter-observer variability. We evaluated the robustness and accuracy of a publically available semiautomatic segmentation algorithm that is implemented in the 3D Slicer Chest Imaging Platform (CIP) and compared it with the performance of manual segmentation. METHODS: CT images of 354 manually segmented nodules were downloaded from the LIDC database. Four radiologists performed the manual segmentation and assessed various nodule characteristics. The semiautomatic CIP segmentation was initialized using the centroid of the manual segmentations, thereby generating four contours for each nodule. The robustness of both segmentation methods was assessed using the region of uncertainty (δ) and Dice similarity index (DSI). The robustness of the segmentation methods was compared using the Wilcoxon-signed rank test (pWilcoxon<0.05). The Dice similarity index (DSIAgree) between the manual and CIP segmentations was computed to estimate the accuracy of the semiautomatic contours. RESULTS: The median computational time of the CIP segmentation was 10 s. The median CIP and manually segmented volumes were 477 ml and 309 ml, respectively. CIP segmentations were significantly more robust than manual segmentations (median δCIP = 14ml, median dsiCIP = 99% vs. median δmanual = 222ml, median dsimanual = 82%) with pWilcoxon 10-16. The agreement between CIP and manual segmentations had a median DSIAgree of 60%. While 13% (47/354) of the nodules did not require any manual adjustment, minor to substantial manual adjustments were needed for 87% (305/354) of the nodules. CIP segmentations were observed to perform poorly (median DSIAgree≈50%) for non-/sub-solid nodules with subtle appearances and poorly defined boundaries. CONCLUSION: Semi-automatic CIP segmentation can potentially reduce the physician workload for 13% of nodules owing to its computational efficiency and superior stability compared to manual segmentation. Although manual adjustment is needed for many cases, CIP segmentation provides a preliminary contour for physicians as a starting point.

Otake Y, Yokota F, Fukuda N, Takao M, Takagi S, Yamamura N, Donnell LO, Carl-Fredrik W, Sugano N, Sato Y. Patient-Specific Skeletal Muscle Fiber Modeling from Structure Tensor Field of Clinical CT Images. Int Conf Med Image Comput Comput Assist Interv. 2017;20(Pt1):656–63.

We propose an optimization method for estimating patient- specific muscle fiber arrangement from clinical CT. Our approach first computes the structure tensor field to estimate local orientation, then a geometric template representing fiber arrangement is fitted using a B- spline deformation by maximizing fitness of the local orientation using a smoothness penalty. The initialization is computed with a previously proposed algorithm that takes account of only the muscle’s surface shape. Evaluation was performed using a CT volume (1.0mm3/voxel) and high resolution optical images of a serial cryosection (0.1mm3/voxel). The mean fiber distance error at the initialization of 6.00 mm was decreased to 2.78mm after the proposed optimization for the gluteus maximus muscle, and from 5.28 mm to 3.09 mm for the gluteus medius muscle. The result from 20 patient CT images suggested that the proposed algorithm reconstructed an anatomically more plausible fiber arrangement than the previous method.

Hong Y, Golland P, Zhang M. Fast Geodesic Regression for Population-Based Image Analysis. Int Conf Med Image Comput Comput Assist Interv. 2017;20(Pt1):317–25.

Geodesic regression on images enables studies of brain development and degeneration, disease progression, and tumor growth. The high-dimensional nature of image data presents significant computational challenges for the current regression approaches and prohibits large scale studies. In this paper, we present a fast geodesic regression method that dramatically decreases the computational cost of the inference procedure while maintaining prediction accuracy. We employ an efficient low dimensional representation of diffeomorphic transformations derived from the image data and characterize the regressed trajectory in the space of diffeomorphisms by its initial conditions, i.e., an initial image template and an initial velocity field computed as a weighted average of pairwise diffeomorphic image registration results. This construction is achieved by using a first-order approximation of pairwise distances between images. We demonstrate the efficiency of our model on a set of 3D brain MRI scans from the OASIS dataset and show that it is dramatically faster than the state-of-the-art regression methods while producing equally good regression results on the large subject cohort.

Niethammer M, Pohl KM, Janoos F, Wells WM. Active Mean Fields for Probabilistic Image Segmentation: Connections with Chan-Vese and Rudin-Osher-Fatemi Models. SIAM J. Imaging Sci. 2017;10(3):1069–1103.

Segmentation is a fundamental task for extracting semantically meaningful regions from an image. The goal of segmentation algorithms is to accurately assign object labels to each image location. However, image noise, shortcomings of algorithms, and image ambiguities cause uncertainty in label assignment. Estimating this uncertainty is important in multiple application domains, such as segmenting tumors from medical images for radiation treatment planning. One way to estimate these uncertainties is through the computation of posteriors of Bayesian models, which is computationally prohibitive for many practical applications. However, most computationally efficient methods fail to estimate label uncertainty. We therefore propose in this paper the active mean fields (AMF) approach, a technique based on Bayesian modeling that uses a mean-field approximation to efficiently compute a segmentation and its corresponding uncertainty. Based on a variational formulation, the resulting convex model combines any label-likelihood measure with a prior on the length of the segmentation boundary. A specific implementation of that model is the Chan-Vese segmentation model, in which the binary segmentation task is defined by a Gaussian likelihood and a prior regularizing the length of the segmentation boundary. Furthermore, the Euler-Lagrange equations derived from the AMF model are equivalent to those of the popular Rudin-Osher-Fatemi (ROF) model for image denoising. Solutions to the AMF model can thus be implemented by directly utilizing highly efficient ROF solvers on log-likelihood ratio fields. We qualitatively assess the approach on synthetic data as well as on real natural and medical images. For a quantitative evaluation, we apply our approach to the tt icgbench dataset.

Herz C, Fillion-Robin JC, Onken M, Riesmeier J, Lasso A, Pinter C, Fichtinger G, Pieper S, Clunie D, Kikinis R, Fedorov A. DCMQI: An Open Source Library for Standardized Communication of Quantitative Image Analysis Results using DICOM. Cancer Research. 2017;77(21):e87-e90.

Quantitative analysis of clinical image data is an active area of research that holds promise for precision medicine, early assessment of treatment response, and objective characterization of the disease. Interoperability, data sharing, and the ability to mine the resulting data are of increasing importance, given the explosive growth in the number of quantitative analysis methods being proposed. The Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) standard is widely adopted for image and metadata in radiology. dcmqi (DICOM for Quantitative Imaging) is a free, open source library that implements conversion of the data stored in commonly used research formats into the standard DICOM representation. dcmqi source code is distributed under BSD-style license. It is freely available as a precompiled binary package for every major operating system, as a Docker image, and as an extension to 3D Slicer. Installation and usage instructions are provided on Harvard DASH.

Halle M, Talos IF, Jakab M, Makris N, Meier D, Wald LL, Fischl B, Kikinis R. Multi-modality MRI-based Atlas of the Brain. 2017.

The Neuroimage Analysis Center’s Computational Clinical Anatomy Core and the Surgical Planning Laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital is pleased to make available a multi-modality MRI-based atlas of the brain. Data was acquired at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging (courtesy Dr. Lawrence Wald) on a Siemens 3T scanner, using a multi-array head coil, in a healthy, 42 year old male. The data set consists of : 1. a volumetric whole head MPRAGE series (voxel size 0.75 mm isotropic). 2. a volumetric whole head T2-weighted series (voxel size 0.75 mm isotropic). 3. a downsampled version of both acquisitions at 1mm isotropic resolution. 4. a per voxel labeling of the structures based on the 1mm volumes. 5. a color file mapping label values to RadLex-ontology derived names and colors suitable for display. 6. MRML files for displaying the volumes in 3D Slicer version 3.6 or greater, available for download. The atlas data is made available under terms of the 3D Slicer License section B.The Slicer4 version also consists of 1. hypotalamic parcellation (courtesy Nikos Makris [Neuroimage. 2013]) 2. cerebellar parcellation (courtesy Nikos Makris [J Cogn Neurosci. 2003], [Neuroimage. 2005]) 3.head and neck muscles segmentation 4. anatomical model hierarchy 5. several pre-defined Scene Views (“anatomy teaching files”). All in a mrb (Medical Reality Bundle) archive file that contains the mrml scene file and all data for loading into Slicer 4 for displaying the volumes in 3D Slicer version 4.0 or greater, available for download.This work is funded as part of the Neuroimaging Analysis Center, grant number P41 RR013218, by the NIH’s National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) and grant number P41 EB015902, by the NIH’s National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) and the Google Faculty Research Award.Contributors: Ilwoo Lyu and Martin Styner: Sulcal Curves, Samira Farough: Ventricular System, Ibraheem Naeem and Maria Naeem: Head and Neck Muscles, George Papadimitriou: Cerebellar Parcellation, Madiha Tahir: White Matter.This atlas maybe viewed with our Open Anatomy Browser.

Norton I, Ibn Essayed W, Zhang F, Pujol S, Yarmarkovich A, Golby AJ, Kindlmann G, Wasserman D, Estepar RSJ, Rathi Y, Pieper S, Kikinis R, Johnson HJ, Westin CF, O’Donnell LJ. SlicerDMRI: Open Source Diffusion MRI Software for Brain Cancer Research. Cancer Res. 2017;77(21):e101-e103.

Diffusion MRI (dMRI) is the only noninvasive method for mapping white matter connections in the brain. We describe SlicerDMRI, a software suite that enables visualization and analysis of dMRI for neuroscientific studies and patient-specific anatomic assessment. SlicerDMRI has been successfully applied in multiple studies of the human brain in health and disease, and here, we especially focus on its cancer research applications. As an extension module of the 3D Slicer medical image computing platform, the SlicerDMRI suite enables dMRI analysis in a clinically relevant multimodal imaging workflow. Core SlicerDMRI functionality includes diffusion tensor estimation, white matter tractography with single and multi-fiber models, and dMRI quantification. SlicerDMRI supports clinical DICOM and research file formats, is open-source and cross-platform, and can be installed as an extension to 3D Slicer (www.slicer.org). More information, videos, tutorials, and sample data are available at dmri.slicer.org Cancer Res; 77(21); e101-3. ©2017 AACR.