Publications

2019

Valera EM, Cao A, Pasternak O, Shenton ME, Kubicki M, Makris N, Adra N. White Matter Correlates of Mild Traumatic Brain Injuries in Women Subjected to Intimate-Partner Violence: A Preliminary Study. J Neurotrauma. 2019;36(5):661–8.
A large proportion (range of 44-75%) of women who experience intimate-partner violence (IPV) have been shown to sustain repetitive mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBIs) from their abusers. Further, despite requests for research on TBI-related health outcomes, there are currently only a handful of studies addressing this issue and only one prior imaging study that has investigated the neural correlates of IPV-related TBIs. In response, we examined specific regions of white matter microstructure in 20 women with histories of IPV. Subjects were imaged on a 3-Tesla Siemens Magnetom TrioTim scanner using diffusion magnetic resonance imaging. We investigated the association between a score reflecting number and recency of IPV-related mTBIs and fractional anisotropy (FA) in the posterior and superior corona radiata as well as the posterior thalamic radiation, brain regions shown previously to be involved in mTBI. We also investigated the association between several cognitive measures, namely learning, memory, and cognitive flexibility, and FA in the white matter regions of interest. We report a negative correlation between the brain injury score and FA in regions of the posterior and superior corona radiata. We failed to find an association between our cognitive measures and FA in these regions, but the interpretation of these results remains inconclusive due to possible power issues. Overall, these data build upon the small but growing literature demonstrating potential consequences of mTBIs for women experiencing IPV, and further underscore the urgent need for larger and more comprehensive studies in this area.
Lampinen B, Szczepankiewicz F, Novén M, van Westen D, Hansson O, Englund E, Mårtensson J, Westin CF, Nilsson M. Searching for the Neurite Density with Diffusion MRI: Challenges for Biophysical Modeling. Hum Brain Mapp. 2019;40(8):2529–45.
In vivo mapping of the neurite density with diffusion MRI (dMRI) is a high but challenging aim. First, it is unknown whether all neurites exhibit completely anisotropic ("stick-like") diffusion. Second, the "density" of tissue components may be confounded by non-diffusion properties such as T2 relaxation. Third, the domain of validity for the estimated parameters to serve as indices of neurite density is incompletely explored. We investigated these challenges by acquiring data with "b-tensor encoding" and multiple echo times in brain regions with low orientation coherence and in white matter lesions. Results showed that microscopic anisotropy from b-tensor data is associated with myelinated axons but not with dendrites. Furthermore, b-tensor data together with data acquired for multiple echo times showed that unbiased density estimates in white matter lesions require data-driven estimates of compartment-specific T2 values. Finally, the "stick" fractions of different biophysical models could generally not serve as neurite density indices across the healthy brain and white matter lesions, where outcomes of comparisons depended on the choice of constraints. In particular, constraining compartment-specific T2 values was ambiguous in the healthy brain and had a large impact on estimated values. In summary, estimating neurite density generally requires accounting for different diffusion and/or T2 properties between axons and dendrites. Constrained "index" parameters could be valid within limited domains that should be delineated by future studies.
Jafari-Khouzani K, Paynabar K, Hajighasemi F, Rosen B. Effect of Region of Interest Size on the Repeatability of Quantitative Brain Imaging Biomarkers. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2019;66(3):864–72.
In the repeatability analysis, when the measurement is the mean value of a parametric map within a region of interest (ROI), the ROI size becomes important as by increasing the size, the measurement will have a smaller variance. This is important in decision-making in prospective clinical studies of brain when the ROI size is variable, e.g., in monitoring the effect of treatment on lesions by quantitative MRI, and in particular when the ROI is small, e.g., in the case of brain lesions in multiple sclerosis. Thus, methods to estimate repeatability measures for arbitrary sizes of ROI are desired. We propose a statistical model of the values of parametric map within the ROI and a method to approximate the model parameters, based on which we estimate a number of repeatability measures including repeatability coefficient, coefficient of variation, and intraclass correlation coefficient for an ROI with an arbitrary size. We also show how this gives an insight into related problems such as spatial smoothing in voxel-wise analysis. Experiments are conducted on simulated data as well as on scan-rescan brain MRI of healthy subjects. The main application of this study is the adjustment of the decision threshold based on the lesion size in treatment monitoring.
Nitsch J, Klein J, Dammann P, Wrede K, Gembruch O, Moltz JH, Meine H, Sure U, Kikinis R, Miller D. Automatic and Efficient MRI-US Segmentations for Improving Intraoperative Image Fusion in Image-guided Neurosurgery. Neuroimage Clin. 2019;22:101766.
Knowledge of the exact tumor location and structures at risk in its vicinity are crucial for neurosurgical interventions. Neuronavigation systems support navigation within the patient’s brain, based on preoperative MRI (preMRI). However, increasing tissue deformation during the course of tumor resection reduces navigation accuracy based on preMRI. Intraoperative ultrasound (iUS) is therefore used as real-time intraoperative imaging. Registration of preMRI and iUS remains a challenge due to different or varying contrasts in iUS and preMRI. Here, we present an automatic and efficient segmentation of B-mode US images to support the registration process. The falx cerebri and the tentorium cerebelli were identified as examples for central cerebral structures and their segmentations can serve as guiding frame for multi-modal image registration. Segmentations of the falx and tentorium were performed with an average Dice coefficient of 0.74 and an average Hausdorff distance of 12.2 mm. The subsequent registration incorporates these segmentations and increases accuracy, robustness and speed of the overall registration process compared to purely intensity-based registration. For validation an expert manually located corresponding landmarks. Our approach reduces the initial mean Target Registration Error from 16.9 mm to 3.8 mm using our intensity-based registration and to 2.2 mm with our combined segmentation and registration approach. The intensity-based registration reduced the maximum initial TRE from 19.4 mm to 5.6 mm, with the approach incorporating segmentations this is reduced to 3.0 mm. Mean volumetric intensity-based registration of preMRI and iUS took 40.5 s, including segmentations 12.0 s.
Shusharina N, Fullerton B, Adams JA, Sharp GC, Chan AW. Impact of aeration change and beam arrangement on the robustness of proton plans. J Appl Clin Med Phys. 2019;20(3):14–21.
This study determines the impact of change in aeration in sinonasal cavities on the robustness of passive-scattering proton therapy plans in patients with sinonasal and nasopharyngeal malignancies. Fourteen patients, each with one planning CT and one CT acquired during radiotherapy were studied. Repeat and planning CTs were rigidly aligned and contours were transferred using deformable registration. The amount of air, tumor, and fluid within the cavity containing the tumor were measured on both CTs. The original plans were recalculated on the repeat CT. Dosimetric changes were measured for the targets and critical structures. Median decrease in gross tumor volume (GTV) was 19.8% and correlated with the time of rescan. The median change in air content was 7.1% and correlated with the tumor shrinkage. The median of the mean dose D change was +0.4% for GTV and +0.3% for clinical target volume. Median change in the maximum dose D of the critical structures were as follows: optic chiasm +0.66%, left optic nerve +0.12%, right optic nerve +0.38%, brainstem +0.6%. The dose to the GTV decreased by more than 5% in 1 case, and the dose to critical structure(s) increased by more than 5% in three cases. These four patients had sinonasal cancers and were treated with anterior proton fields that directly transversed through the involved sinus cavities. The change in dose in the replanning was strongly correlated with the change in aeration (P = 0.02). We found that the change in aeration in the vicinity of the target and the arrangement of proton beams affected the robustness of proton plan.
Gilbert TM, Zürcher NR, Catanese MC, Tseng CEJ, Di Biase MA, Lyall AE, Hightower BG, Parmar AJ, Bhanot A, Wu CJ, Hibert ML, Kim M, Mahmood U, Stufflebeam SM, Schroeder FA, Wang C, Roffman JL, Holt DJ, Greve DN, Pasternak O, Kubicki M, Wey HY, Hooker JM. Neuroepigenetic Signatures of Age and Sex in the Living Human Brain. Nat Commun. 2019;10(1):2945.
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.
Nery F, Szczepankiewicz F, Kerkelä L, Hall MG, Kaden E, Gordon I, Thomas DL, Clark CA. In vivo Demonstration of Microscopic Anisotropy in the Human Kidney using Multidimensional Diffusion MRI. Magn Reson Med. 2019;82(6):2160–8.
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.
Canalini L, Klein J, Miller D, Kikinis R. Segmentation-based Registration of Ultrasound Volumes for Glioma Resection in Image-guided Neurosurgery. Int J Comput Assist Radiol Surg. 2019;14(10):1697–1713.
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.
Zaffino P, Pernelle G, Mastmeyer A, Mehrtash A, Zhang H, Kikinis R, Kapur T, Spadea MF. Fully Automatic Catheter Segmentation in MRI with 3D Convolutional Neural Networks: Application to MRI-guided Gynecologic Brachytherapy. Phys Med Biol. 2019;64(16):165008.
External-beam radiotherapy followed by high dose rate (HDR) brachytherapy is the standard-of-care for treating gynecologic cancers. The enhanced soft-tissue contrast provided by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) makes it a valuable imaging modality for diagnosing and treating these cancers. However, in contrast to computed tomography (CT) imaging, the appearance of the brachytherapy catheters, through which radiation sources are inserted to reach the cancerous tissue later on, is often variable across images. This paper reports, for the first time, a new deep-learning-based method for fully automatic segmentation of multiple closely spaced brachytherapy catheters in intraoperative MRI. Represented in the data are 50 gynecologic cancer patients treated by MRI-guided HDR brachytherapy. For each patient, a single intraoperative MRI was used. 826 catheters in the images were manually segmented by an expert radiation physicist who is also a trained radiation oncologist. The number of catheters in a patient ranged between 10 and 35. A deep 3D convolutional neural network (CNN) model was developed and trained. In order to make the learning process more robust, the network was trained 5 times, each time using a different combination of shown patients. Finally, each test case was processed by the five networks and the final segmentation was generated by voting on the obtained five candidate segmentations. 4-fold validation was executed and all the patients were segmented. An average distance error of 2.0 ± 3.4 mm was achieved. False positive and false negative catheters were 6.7% and 1.5% respectively. Average Dice score was equal to 0.60 ± 0.17. The algorithm is available for use in the open source software platform 3D Slicer allowing for wide scale testing and research discussion. In conclusion, to the best of our knowledge, fully automatic segmentation of multiple closely spaced catheters from intraoperative MR images was achieved for the first time in gynecological brachytherapy.
Miller K, Joldes GR, Bourantas G, Warfield SK, Hyde DE, Kikinis R, Wittek A. Biomechanical Modeling and Computer Simulation of the Brain during Neurosurgery. Int J Numer Method Biomed Eng. 2019;35(10):e3250.
Computational biomechanics of the brain for neurosurgery is an emerging area of research recently gaining in importance and practical applications. This review paper presents the contributions of the Intelligent Systems for Medicine Laboratory and its collaborators to this field, discussing the modeling approaches adopted and the methods developed for obtaining the numerical solutions. We adopt a physics-based modeling approach and describe the brain deformation in mechanical terms (such as displacements, strains, and stresses), which can be computed using a biomechanical model, by solving a continuum mechanics problem. We present our modeling approaches related to geometry creation, boundary conditions, loading, and material properties. From the point of view of solution methods, we advocate the use of fully nonlinear modeling approaches, capable of capturing very large deformations and nonlinear material behavior. We discuss finite element and meshless domain discretization, the use of the total Lagrangian formulation of continuum mechanics, and explicit time integration for solving both time-accurate and steady-state problems. We present the methods developed for handling contacts and for warping 3D medical images using the results of our simulations. We present two examples to showcase these methods: brain shift estimation for image registration and brain deformation computation for neuronavigation in epilepsy treatment.