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Videtta G, Colli C, Squarcina L, Fagnani C, Medda E, Brambilla P, Delvecchio G. Heritability of white matter in twins: A diffusion neuroimaging review. Phys Life Rev 2024; 50:126-136. [PMID: 39079258 DOI: 10.1016/j.plrev.2024.07.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/02/2024] [Accepted: 07/03/2024] [Indexed: 09/02/2024]
Abstract
Diffusion neuroimaging has emerged as an essential non-invasive technique to explore in vivo microstructural characteristics of white matter (WM), whose integrity allows complex behaviors and cognitive abilities. Studying the factors contributing to inter-individual variability in WM microstructure can provide valuable insight into structural and functional differences of brain among individuals. Genetic influence on this variation has been largely investigated in twin studies employing different measures derived from diffusion neuroimaging. In this context, we performed a comprehensive literature search across PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science of original twin studies focused on the heritability of WM. Overall, our results highlighted a consistent heritability of diffusion indices (i.e., fractional anisotropy, mean, axial and radial diffusivity), and network topology among twins. The genetic influence resulted prominent in frontal and occipital regions, in the limbic system, and in commissural fibers. To enhance the understanding of genetic influence on WM microstructure further studies in less heterogeneous experimental settings, encompassing all diffusion indices, are warranted.
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Affiliation(s)
- Giovanni Videtta
- Department of Biomedical Sciences for Health, University of Milan, Milan, Italy
| | - Chiara Colli
- Department of Pathophysiology and Transplantation, University of Milan, Milan, Italy
| | - Letizia Squarcina
- Department of Pathophysiology and Transplantation, University of Milan, Milan, Italy
| | - Corrado Fagnani
- Centre for Behavioural Sciences and Mental Health, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy
| | - Emanuela Medda
- Centre for Behavioural Sciences and Mental Health, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy
| | - Paolo Brambilla
- Department of Pathophysiology and Transplantation, University of Milan, Milan, Italy; Department of Neurosciences and Mental Health, Fondazione IRCCS Ca' Granda, Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, via F. Sforza 35, Milan 20122, Italy
| | - Giuseppe Delvecchio
- Department of Neurosciences and Mental Health, Fondazione IRCCS Ca' Granda, Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, via F. Sforza 35, Milan 20122, Italy.
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2
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Levitt JJ, Zhang F, Vangel M, Nestor PG, Rathi Y, Cetin-Karayumak S, Kubicki M, Coleman MJ, Lewandowski KE, Holt DJ, Keshavan M, Bouix S, Öngür D, Breier A, Shenton ME, O'Donnell LJ. The organization of frontostriatal brain wiring in non-affective early psychosis compared with healthy subjects using a novel diffusion imaging fiber cluster analysis. Mol Psychiatry 2023; 28:2301-2311. [PMID: 37173451 DOI: 10.1038/s41380-023-02031-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/13/2022] [Revised: 02/13/2023] [Accepted: 03/08/2023] [Indexed: 05/15/2023]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Alterations in brain connectivity may underlie neuropsychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia. We here assessed the degree of convergence of frontostriatal fiber projections in 56 young adult healthy controls (HCs) and 108 matched Early Psychosis-Non-Affective patients (EP-NAs) using our novel fiber cluster analysis of whole brain diffusion magnetic resonance imaging tractography. METHODS Using whole brain tractography and our fiber clustering methodology on harmonized diffusion magnetic resonance imaging data from the Human Connectome Project for Early Psychosis we identified 17 white matter fiber clusters that connect frontal cortex (FCtx) and caudate (Cd) per hemisphere in each group. To quantify the degree of convergence and, hence, topographical relationship of these fiber clusters, we measured the inter-cluster mean distances between the endpoints of the fiber clusters at the level of the FCtx and of the Cd, respectively. RESULTS We found (1) in both groups, bilaterally, a non-linear relationship, yielding convex curves, between FCtx and Cd distances for FCtx-Cd connecting fiber clusters, driven by a cluster projecting from inferior frontal gyrus; however, in the right hemisphere, the convex curve was more flattened in EP-NAs; (2) that cluster pairs in the right (p = 0.03), but not left (p = 0.13), hemisphere were significantly more convergent in HCs vs EP-NAs; (3) in both groups, bilaterally, similar clusters projected significantly convergently to the Cd; and, (4) a significant group by fiber cluster pair interaction for 2 right hemisphere fiber clusters (numbers 5, 11; p = .00023; p = .00023) originating in selective PFC subregions. CONCLUSIONS In both groups, we found the FCtx-Cd wiring pattern deviated from a strictly topographic relationship and that similar clusters projected significantly more convergently to the Cd. Interestingly, we also found a significantly more convergent pattern of connectivity in HCs in the right hemisphere and that 2 clusters from PFC subregions in the right hemisphere significantly differed in their pattern of connectivity between groups.
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Affiliation(s)
- J J Levitt
- Department of Psychiatry, VA Boston Healthcare System, Brockton Division, Brockton, MA, 02301, USA.
- Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA.
- Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA.
| | - F Zhang
- Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA
| | - M Vangel
- Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02114, USA
| | - P G Nestor
- Department of Psychiatry, VA Boston Healthcare System, Brockton Division, Brockton, MA, 02301, USA
- Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA
- Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA, 02125, USA
| | - Y Rathi
- Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA
- Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02114, USA
| | - S Cetin-Karayumak
- Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA
| | - M Kubicki
- Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA
- Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA
- Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02114, USA
| | - M J Coleman
- Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA
| | - K E Lewandowski
- McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Belmont, MA, 02478, USA
| | - D J Holt
- Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02114, USA
| | - M Keshavan
- Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02215, USA
| | - S Bouix
- Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA
- Department of Software Engineering and Information Technology, École de technologie supérieure, Université du Québec, Montréal, QC, H3C 1K3, Canada
| | - D Öngür
- McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Belmont, MA, 02478, USA
| | - A Breier
- Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, 46202, USA
| | - M E Shenton
- Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA
- Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA
- Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02114, USA
| | - L J O'Donnell
- Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA
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Chen Y, Zhang C, Xue T, Song Y, Makris N, Rathi Y, Cai W, Zhang F, O'Donnell LJ. Deep fiber clustering: Anatomically informed fiber clustering with self-supervised deep learning for fast and effective tractography parcellation. Neuroimage 2023; 273:120086. [PMID: 37019346 PMCID: PMC10958986 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120086] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/13/2023] [Accepted: 04/02/2023] [Indexed: 04/05/2023] Open
Abstract
White matter fiber clustering is an important strategy for white matter parcellation, which enables quantitative analysis of brain connections in health and disease. In combination with expert neuroanatomical labeling, data-driven white matter fiber clustering is a powerful tool for creating atlases that can model white matter anatomy across individuals. While widely used fiber clustering approaches have shown good performance using classical unsupervised machine learning techniques, recent advances in deep learning reveal a promising direction toward fast and effective fiber clustering. In this work, we propose a novel deep learning framework for white matter fiber clustering, Deep Fiber Clustering (DFC), which solves the unsupervised clustering problem as a self-supervised learning task with a domain-specific pretext task to predict pairwise fiber distances. This process learns a high-dimensional embedding feature representation for each fiber, regardless of the order of fiber points reconstructed during tractography. We design a novel network architecture that represents input fibers as point clouds and allows the incorporation of additional sources of input information from gray matter parcellation. Thus, DFC makes use of combined information about white matter fiber geometry and gray matter anatomy to improve the anatomical coherence of fiber clusters. In addition, DFC conducts outlier removal naturally by rejecting fibers with low cluster assignment probability. We evaluate DFC on three independently acquired cohorts, including data from 220 individuals across genders, ages (young and elderly adults), and different health conditions (healthy control and multiple neuropsychiatric disorders). We compare DFC to several state-of-the-art white matter fiber clustering algorithms. Experimental results demonstrate superior performance of DFC in terms of cluster compactness, generalization ability, anatomical coherence, and computational efficiency.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yuqian Chen
- Harvard Medical School, MA, USA; The University of Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | | | - Tengfei Xue
- Harvard Medical School, MA, USA; The University of Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Yang Song
- The University of New South Wales, NSW, Australia
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4
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Xue T, Zhang F, Zhang C, Chen Y, Song Y, Golby AJ, Makris N, Rathi Y, Cai W, O'Donnell LJ. Superficial white matter analysis: An efficient point-cloud-based deep learning framework with supervised contrastive learning for consistent tractography parcellation across populations and dMRI acquisitions. Med Image Anal 2023; 85:102759. [PMID: 36706638 PMCID: PMC9975054 DOI: 10.1016/j.media.2023.102759] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/18/2022] [Revised: 01/05/2023] [Accepted: 01/20/2023] [Indexed: 01/24/2023]
Abstract
Diffusion MRI tractography is an advanced imaging technique that enables in vivo mapping of the brain's white matter connections. White matter parcellation classifies tractography streamlines into clusters or anatomically meaningful tracts. It enables quantification and visualization of whole-brain tractography. Currently, most parcellation methods focus on the deep white matter (DWM), whereas fewer methods address the superficial white matter (SWM) due to its complexity. We propose a novel two-stage deep-learning-based framework, Superficial White Matter Analysis (SupWMA), that performs an efficient and consistent parcellation of 198 SWM clusters from whole-brain tractography. A point-cloud-based network is adapted to our SWM parcellation task, and supervised contrastive learning enables more discriminative representations between plausible streamlines and outliers for SWM. We train our model on a large-scale tractography dataset including streamline samples from labeled long- and medium-range (over 40 mm) SWM clusters and anatomically implausible streamline samples, and we perform testing on six independently acquired datasets of different ages and health conditions (including neonates and patients with space-occupying brain tumors). Compared to several state-of-the-art methods, SupWMA obtains highly consistent and accurate SWM parcellation results on all datasets, showing good generalization across the lifespan in health and disease. In addition, the computational speed of SupWMA is much faster than other methods.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tengfei Xue
- Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA; School of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
| | - Fan Zhang
- Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA.
| | - Chaoyi Zhang
- School of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
| | - Yuqian Chen
- Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA; School of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
| | - Yang Song
- School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
| | | | - Nikos Makris
- Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA; Center for Morphometric Analysis, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, USA
| | - Yogesh Rathi
- Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
| | - Weidong Cai
- School of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
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5
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Chen X, Xie H, Li Z, Cheng G, Leng M, Wang FL. Information fusion and artificial intelligence for smart healthcare: a bibliometric study. Inf Process Manag 2023. [DOI: 10.1016/j.ipm.2022.103113] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/24/2022]
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6
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Yeh FC. Population-based tract-to-region connectome of the human brain and its hierarchical topology. Nat Commun 2022; 13:4933. [PMID: 35995773 PMCID: PMC9395399 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-32595-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 34] [Impact Index Per Article: 17.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/15/2021] [Accepted: 08/05/2022] [Indexed: 12/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Connectome maps region-to-region connectivities but does not inform which white matter pathways form the connections. Here we constructed a population-based tract-to-region connectome to fill this information gap. The constructed connectome quantifies the population probability of a white matter tract innervating a cortical region. The results show that ~85% of the tract-to-region connectome entries are consistent across individuals, whereas the remaining (~15%) have substantial individual differences requiring individualized mapping. Further hierarchical clustering on cortical regions revealed dorsal, ventral, and limbic networks based on the tract-to-region connective patterns. The clustering results on white matter bundles revealed the categorization of fiber bundle systems in the association pathways. This tract-to-region connectome provides insights into the connective topology between cortical regions and white matter bundles. The derived hierarchical relation further offers a categorization of gray and white matter structures. The brain connectome maps region-to-region connections but often ignores the role of the connecting pathways. Here, the authors mapped the tract-to-region relations to reveal the hierarchical relation of fiber bundles and dorsal, ventral, and limbic networks.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fang-Cheng Yeh
- Department of Neurological Surgery, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. .,Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
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7
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Superficial white matter bundle atlas based on hierarchical fiber clustering over probabilistic tractography data. Neuroimage 2022; 262:119550. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119550] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/15/2021] [Revised: 08/01/2022] [Accepted: 08/05/2022] [Indexed: 11/20/2022] Open
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8
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Chen T, Mandal A, Zhu H, Liu R. Imaging Genetic Based Mediation Analysis for Human Cognition. Front Neurosci 2022; 16:824069. [PMID: 35573299 PMCID: PMC9097855 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2022.824069] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/28/2021] [Accepted: 03/23/2022] [Indexed: 11/30/2022] Open
Abstract
The brain connectome maps the structural and functional connectivity that forms an important neurobiological basis for the analysis of human cognitive traits while the genetic predisposition and our cognition ability are frequently found in close association. The issue of how genetic architecture and brain connectome causally affect human behaviors remains unknown. To seek for the potential causal relationship, in this paper, we carried out the causal pathway analysis from single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data to four common human cognitive traits, mediated by the brain connectome. Specifically, we selected 942 SNPs that are significantly associated with the brain connectome, and then estimated the direct and indirect effect on the human traits for each SNP. We found out that a majority of the selected SNPs have significant direct effects on human traits and discussed the trait-related brain regions and their implications.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tingan Chen
- Department of Statistics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, United States
| | - Abhishek Mandal
- Department of Statistics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, United States
| | - Hongtu Zhu
- Department of Biostatistics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States
| | - Rongjie Liu
- Department of Statistics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, United States
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9
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Zhang Y, Furst AJ. Brainstem Diffusion Tensor Tractography and Clinical Applications in Pain. FRONTIERS IN PAIN RESEARCH (LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND) 2022; 3:840328. [PMID: 35399154 PMCID: PMC8989264 DOI: 10.3389/fpain.2022.840328] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/21/2021] [Accepted: 02/15/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022]
Abstract
The brainstem is one of the most vulnerable brain structures in many neurological conditions, such as pain, sleep problems, autonomic dysfunctions, and neurodegenerative disorders. Diffusion tensor imaging and tractography provide structural details and quantitative measures of brainstem fiber pathways. Until recently, diffusion tensor tractographic studies have mainly focused on whole-brain MRI acquisition. Due to the brainstem's spatial localization, size, and tissue characteristics, and limits of imaging techniques, brainstem diffusion MRI poses particular challenges in tractography. We provide a brief overview on recent advances in diffusion tensor tractography in revealing human pathways connecting the brainstem to the subcortical regions (e.g., basal ganglia, mesolimbic, basal forebrain), and cortical regions. Each of these pathways contains different distributions of fiber tracts from known neurotransmitter-specific nuclei in the brainstem. We compare the brainstem tractographic approaches in literature and our in-lab developed automated brainstem tractography in terms of atlas building, technical advantages, and neuroanatomical implications on neurotransmitter systems. Lastly, we summarize recent investigations of using brainstem tractography as a promising tool in association with pain.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yu Zhang
- War Related Illness and Injury Study Center (WRIISC), VA Palo Alto Health Care System, Palo Alto, CA, United States,*Correspondence: Yu Zhang ;
| | - Ansgar J. Furst
- War Related Illness and Injury Study Center (WRIISC), VA Palo Alto Health Care System, Palo Alto, CA, United States,Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA, United States,Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA, United States,Polytrauma System of Care (PSC), VA Palo Alto Health Care System, Palo Alto, CA, United States
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10
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Richards TJ, Anderson KL, Anderson JS. "Fully automated segmentation of the corticospinal tract using the TractSeg algorithm in patients with brain tumors". Clin Neurol Neurosurg 2021; 210:107001. [PMID: 34749021 DOI: 10.1016/j.clineuro.2021.107001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/08/2021] [Revised: 10/11/2021] [Accepted: 10/12/2021] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
Abstract
OBJECTIVE Tractography has been used to define the presurgical location of white matter tracts, but this is subjective and time-intensive, making incorporation to imaging workflow at scale problematic. The objective is to validate a fully automated pipeline using the TractSeg algorithm (Wasserthal et al. NeuroImage 2018;183:239-253) to segment the corticospinal tract in patients with brain tumors adjacent to the corticospinal tract. METHODS The process of importing a structural MPRAGE sequence and raw diffusion weighted images from PACS, executing the TractSeg algorithm, overlaying the resulting bilateral corticospinal tracts on the MPRAGE image, and exporting this composite image to PACS was automated. This procedure was used to segment the corticospinal tract in 28 patients with brain masses adjacent to or displacing the corticospinal tract. These segmentations were compared with both manual deterministic tractography performed with DSI Studio using seeds placed in the pons and an automated tractography method in DSI Studio. RESULTS The automated algorithm was able to segment the bilateral corticospinal tracts in all 28 patients whereas the manual reference method and DSI Studio based automated tractography were unsuccessful in 2 and 1 patients, respectively. In all cases, the TractSeg segmentations very closely matched the manual segmentations. Also, TractSeg appeared to include larger portions of the lateral corticospinal tract fibers than the other 2 methods. CONCLUSION The TractSeg algorithm demonstrated robust performance in segmenting the corticospinal tract in patients with brain tumors adjacent to this tract. The algorithm is fast to perform and has great potential for optimizing and streamlining neurosurgical planning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tyler J Richards
- University of Utah School of Medicine, Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, 30 North 1900 East #1A071, Salt Lake City, UT 84132-2140, USA.
| | - Keri L Anderson
- University of Utah School of Computing, Department of Computer Science, Merrill Engineering, 50 Central Campus Dr, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA.
| | - Jeffrey S Anderson
- University of Utah School of Medicine, Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, 30 North 1900 East #1A071, Salt Lake City, UT 84132-2140, USA.
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11
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Levitt JJ, Zhang F, Vangel M, Nestor PG, Rathi Y, Kubicki M, Shenton ME, O'Donnell LJ. The Organization of Frontostriatal Brain Wiring in Healthy Subjects Using a Novel Diffusion Imaging Fiber Cluster Analysis. Cereb Cortex 2021; 31:5308-5318. [PMID: 34180506 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhab159] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/22/2020] [Revised: 05/11/2021] [Accepted: 05/12/2021] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
To assess normal organization of frontostriatal brain wiring, we analyzed diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) scans in 100 young adult healthy subjects (HSs). We identified fiber clusters intersecting the frontal cortex and caudate, a core component of associative striatum, and quantified their degree of deviation from a strictly topographic pattern. Using whole brain dMRI tractography and an automated tract parcellation clustering method, we extracted 17 white matter fiber clusters per hemisphere connecting the frontal cortex and caudate. In a novel approach to quantify the geometric relationship among clusters, we measured intercluster endpoint distances between corresponding cluster pairs in the frontal cortex and caudate. We show first, the overall frontal cortex wiring pattern of the caudate deviates from a strictly topographic organization due to significantly greater convergence in regionally specific clusters; second, these significantly convergent clusters originate in subregions of ventrolateral, dorsolateral, and orbitofrontal prefrontal cortex (PFC); and, third, a similar organization in both hemispheres. Using a novel tractography method, we find PFC-caudate brain wiring in HSs deviates from a strictly topographic organization due to a regionally specific pattern of cluster convergence. We conjecture cortical subregions projecting to the caudate with greater convergence subserve functions that benefit from greater circuit integration.
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Affiliation(s)
- J J Levitt
- Department of Psychiatry, VA Boston Healthcare System, Brockton Division, Brockton MA 02301, USA.,Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.,Department of Psychiatry, Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02215, USA
| | - F Zhang
- Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
| | - M Vangel
- Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114, USA
| | - P G Nestor
- Department of Psychiatry, VA Boston Healthcare System, Brockton Division, Brockton MA 02301, USA.,Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.,Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA 02125, USA
| | - Y Rathi
- Department of Psychiatry, Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02215, USA.,Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114, USA
| | - M Kubicki
- Department of Psychiatry, Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02215, USA.,Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.,Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114, USA
| | - M E Shenton
- Department of Psychiatry, Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02215, USA.,Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.,Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114, USA
| | - L J O'Donnell
- Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
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12
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Myriam Vimond
- Univ Rennes, Ensai, CNRS, CREST – UMR 9194, Bruz, France
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13
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Goicovich I, Olivares P, Román C, Vázquez A, Poupon C, Mangin JF, Guevara P, Hernández C. Fiber Clustering Acceleration With a Modified Kmeans++ Algorithm Using Data Parallelism. Front Neuroinform 2021; 15:727859. [PMID: 34539370 PMCID: PMC8445177 DOI: 10.3389/fninf.2021.727859] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/19/2021] [Accepted: 08/10/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Fiber clustering methods are typically used in brain research to study the organization of white matter bundles from large diffusion MRI tractography datasets. These methods enable exploratory bundle inspection using visualization and other methods that require identifying brain white matter structures in individuals or a population. Some applications, such as real-time visualization and inter-subject clustering, need fast and high-quality intra-subject clustering algorithms. This work proposes a parallel algorithm using a General Purpose Graphics Processing Unit (GPGPU) for fiber clustering based on the FFClust algorithm. The proposed GPGPU implementation exploits data parallelism using both multicore and GPU fine-grained parallelism present in commodity architectures, including current laptops and desktop computers. Our approach implements all FFClust steps in parallel, improving execution times in all of them. In addition, our parallel approach includes a parallel Kmeans++ algorithm implementation and defines a new variant of Kmeans++ to reduce the impact of choosing outliers as initial centroids. The results show that our approach provides clustering quality results very similar to FFClust, and it requires an execution time of 3.5 s for processing about a million fibers, achieving a speedup of 11.5 times compared to FFClust.
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Affiliation(s)
- Isaac Goicovich
- Department of Electrical Engineering, Universidad de Concepción, Concepción, Chile
| | - Paulo Olivares
- Department of Computer Science, Universidad de Concepción, Concepción, Chile
| | - Claudio Román
- Department of Electrical Engineering, Universidad de Concepción, Concepción, Chile
| | - Andrea Vázquez
- Department of Computer Science, Universidad de Concepción, Concepción, Chile
| | - Cyril Poupon
- Université Paris-Saclay, CEA, CNRS, Neurospin, Baobab, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
| | | | - Pamela Guevara
- Department of Electrical Engineering, Universidad de Concepción, Concepción, Chile
| | - Cecilia Hernández
- Department of Computer Science, Universidad de Concepción, Concepción, Chile.,Center for Biotechnology and Bioengineering, Santiago, Chile
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14
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White matter tract-specific alterations in patients with primary restless legs syndrome. Sci Rep 2021; 11:16116. [PMID: 34373482 PMCID: PMC8352949 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-95238-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/02/2020] [Accepted: 06/22/2021] [Indexed: 01/18/2023] Open
Abstract
Prior diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies have investigated white matter (WM) changes in patients with primary restless legs syndrome (RLS), but the results were inconsistent. Here, we proposed using tract-specific statistical analysis (TSSA) to find alterations in specific WM tracts to clarify the pathophysiological mechanisms of RLS. We enrolled 30 patients with RLS and 31 age- and sex- matched controls who underwent brain magnetic resonance imaging, neuropsychological tests, and polysomnography. Fractional anisotropy (FA) maps obtained from whole-brain diffusion tensor imaging and TSSA were used to localize WM changes in patients with RLS. Subsequently, a comparison of FA values for each tract between patients and controls was performed. The associations between FA values and clinical, polysomnographic, and neuropsychological parameters in RLS patients were assessed. RLS patients demonstrated decreased FA values in the left corticospinal tract (CST) and cingulum, and in the right anterior thalamic radiation (ATR) and inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFO). Patients’ attention/executive function and visual memory scores positively correlated with FA values in the right ATR, and anxiety levels negatively correlated with FA values in the right IFO. Additionally, the number of periodic leg movements and movement arousal index were negatively correlated with FA values in the left CST. The TSSA method identified previously unknown tract-specific alterations in patients with RLS and significant associations with distinct clinical manifestations of RLS.
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15
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Legarreta JH, Petit L, Rheault F, Theaud G, Lemaire C, Descoteaux M, Jodoin PM. Filtering in tractography using autoencoders (FINTA). Med Image Anal 2021; 72:102126. [PMID: 34161915 DOI: 10.1016/j.media.2021.102126] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/26/2020] [Revised: 04/20/2021] [Accepted: 05/26/2021] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Abstract
Current brain white matter fiber tracking techniques show a number of problems, including: generating large proportions of streamlines that do not accurately describe the underlying anatomy; extracting streamlines that are not supported by the underlying diffusion signal; and under-representing some fiber populations, among others. In this paper, we describe a novel autoencoder-based learning method to filter streamlines from diffusion MRI tractography, and hence, to obtain more reliable tractograms. Our method, dubbed FINTA (Filtering in Tractography using Autoencoders) uses raw, unlabeled tractograms to train the autoencoder, and to learn a robust representation of brain streamlines. Such an embedding is then used to filter undesired streamline samples using a nearest neighbor algorithm. Our experiments on both synthetic and in vivo human brain diffusion MRI tractography data obtain accuracy scores exceeding the 90% threshold on the test set. Results reveal that FINTA has a superior filtering performance compared to conventional, anatomy-based methods, and the RecoBundles state-of-the-art method. Additionally, we demonstrate that FINTA can be applied to partial tractograms without requiring changes to the framework. We also show that the proposed method generalizes well across different tracking methods and datasets, and shortens significantly the computation time for large (>1 M streamlines) tractograms. Together, this work brings forward a new deep learning framework in tractography based on autoencoders, which offers a flexible and powerful method for white matter filtering and bundling that could enhance tractometry and connectivity analyses.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jon Haitz Legarreta
- Sherbrooke Connectivity Imaging Laboratory (SCIL), Department of Computer Science, Université de Sherbrooke, 2500, boul. de l'Université, Sherbrooke, Québec J1K 2R1, Canada; Videos & Images Theory and Analytics Laboratory (VITAL), Department of Computer Science, Université de Sherbrooke, 2500, boul. de l'Université, Sherbrooke, Québec J1K 2R1, Canada.
| | - Laurent Petit
- Groupe d'Imagerie Neurofonctionnelle (GIN), Univ. Bordeaux, CNRS, CEA, IMN, UMR 5293, Bordeaux F-33000, France
| | - François Rheault
- Sherbrooke Connectivity Imaging Laboratory (SCIL), Department of Computer Science, Université de Sherbrooke, 2500, boul. de l'Université, Sherbrooke, Québec J1K 2R1, Canada
| | - Guillaume Theaud
- Sherbrooke Connectivity Imaging Laboratory (SCIL), Department of Computer Science, Université de Sherbrooke, 2500, boul. de l'Université, Sherbrooke, Québec J1K 2R1, Canada
| | - Carl Lemaire
- Centre de Calcul Scientifique, Université de Sherbrooke, 2500, boul. de l'Université, Sherbrooke, Québec J1K 2R1, Canada
| | - Maxime Descoteaux
- Sherbrooke Connectivity Imaging Laboratory (SCIL), Department of Computer Science, Université de Sherbrooke, 2500, boul. de l'Université, Sherbrooke, Québec J1K 2R1, Canada
| | - Pierre-Marc Jodoin
- Videos & Images Theory and Analytics Laboratory (VITAL), Department of Computer Science, Université de Sherbrooke, 2500, boul. de l'Université, Sherbrooke, Québec J1K 2R1, Canada
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16
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Xu C, Sun G, Liang R, Xu X. Vector Field Streamline Clustering Framework for Brain Fiber Tract Segmentation. IEEE Trans Cogn Dev Syst 2021. [DOI: 10.1109/tcds.2021.3094555] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
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17
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Zhang F, Cetin Karayumak S, Hoffmann N, Rathi Y, Golby AJ, O'Donnell LJ. Deep white matter analysis (DeepWMA): Fast and consistent tractography segmentation. Med Image Anal 2020; 65:101761. [PMID: 32622304 PMCID: PMC7483951 DOI: 10.1016/j.media.2020.101761] [Citation(s) in RCA: 38] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/23/2019] [Revised: 06/16/2020] [Accepted: 06/18/2020] [Indexed: 02/07/2023]
Abstract
White matter tract segmentation, i.e. identifying tractography fibers (streamline trajectories) belonging to anatomically meaningful fiber tracts, is an essential step to enable tract quantification and visualization. In this study, we present a deep learning tractography segmentation method (DeepWMA) that allows fast and consistent identification of 54 major deep white matter fiber tracts from the whole brain. We create a large-scale training tractography dataset of 1 million labeled fiber samples, and we propose a novel 2D multi-channel feature descriptor (FiberMap) that encodes spatial coordinates of points along each fiber. We learn a convolutional neural network (CNN) fiber classification model based on FiberMap and obtain a high fiber classification accuracy of 90.99% on the training tractography data with ground truth fiber labels. Then, the method is evaluated on a test dataset of 597 diffusion MRI scans from six independently acquired populations across genders, the lifespan (1 day - 82 years), and different health conditions (healthy control, neuropsychiatric disorders, and brain tumor patients). We perform comparisons with two state-of-the-art tract segmentation methods. Experimental results show that our method obtains a highly consistent tract segmentation result, where on average over 99% of the fiber tracts are successfully identified across all subjects under study, most importantly, including neonates and patients with space-occupying brain tumors. We also demonstrate good generalization of the method to tractography data from multiple different fiber tracking methods. The proposed method leverages deep learning techniques and provides a fast and efficient tool for brain white matter segmentation in large diffusion MRI tractography datasets.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fan Zhang
- Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
| | | | - Nico Hoffmann
- Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Yogesh Rathi
- Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Alexandra J Golby
- Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
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18
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Neuro4Neuro: A neural network approach for neural tract segmentation using large-scale population-based diffusion imaging. Neuroimage 2020; 218:116993. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116993] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/17/2019] [Revised: 03/06/2020] [Accepted: 05/21/2020] [Indexed: 12/21/2022] Open
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19
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Vázquez A, López-López N, Sánchez A, Houenou J, Poupon C, Mangin JF, Hernández C, Guevara P. FFClust: Fast fiber clustering for large tractography datasets for a detailed study of brain connectivity. Neuroimage 2020; 220:117070. [PMID: 32599269 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117070] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/30/2019] [Revised: 03/19/2020] [Accepted: 06/16/2020] [Indexed: 01/31/2023] Open
Abstract
Automated methods that can identify white matter bundles from large tractography datasets have several applications in neuroscience research. In these applications, clustering algorithms have shown to play an important role in the analysis and visualization of white matter structure, generating useful data which can be the basis for further studies. This work proposes FFClust, an efficient fiber clustering method for large tractography datasets containing millions of fibers. Resulting clusters describe the whole set of main white matter fascicles present on an individual brain. The method aims to identify compact and homogeneous clusters, which enables several applications. In individuals, the clusters can be used to study the local connectivity in pathological brains, while at population level, the processing and analysis of reproducible bundles, and other post-processing algorithms can be carried out to study the brain connectivity and create new white matter bundle atlases. The proposed method was evaluated in terms of quality and execution time performance versus the state-of-the-art clustering techniques used in the area. Results show that FFClust is effective in the creation of compact clusters, with a low intra-cluster distance, while keeping a good quality Davies-Bouldin index, which is a metric that quantifies the quality of clustering approaches. Furthermore, it is about 8.6 times faster than the most efficient state-of-the-art method for one million fibers dataset. In addition, we show that FFClust is able to correctly identify atlas bundles connecting different brain regions, as an example of application and the utility of compact clusters.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrea Vázquez
- Universidad de Concepción, Department of Computer Science, Concepción, Chile
| | - Narciso López-López
- Universidad de Concepción, Department of Computer Science, Concepción, Chile; Universidade da Coruña, Centro de investigación CITIC, A Coruña, Spain
| | - Alexis Sánchez
- Universidad de Concepción, Department of Computer Science, Concepción, Chile
| | - Josselin Houenou
- Université Paris-Saclay, CEA, CNRS, Baobab, Neurospin, Gif-sur-Yvette, France; INSERM U955 Unit, Mondor Institute for Biomedical Research, Team 15 "Translational Psychiatry", Créteil, France; Fondation Fondamental, Créteil, France; AP-HP, Department of Psychiatry and Addictology, Mondor University Hospitals, School of Medicine, DHU PePsy, Créteil, France
| | - Cyril Poupon
- Université Paris-Saclay, CEA, CNRS, Baobab, Neurospin, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
| | | | - Cecilia Hernández
- Universidad de Concepción, Department of Computer Science, Concepción, Chile; Center for Biotechnology and Bioengineering (CeBiB), Santiago, Chile
| | - Pamela Guevara
- Universidad de Concepción, Department of Electrical Engineering, Concepción, Chile.
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20
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Visual interactive exploration and clustering of brain fiber tracts. J Vis (Tokyo) 2020. [DOI: 10.1007/s12650-020-00642-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
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21
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Registration-free analysis of diffusion MRI tractography data across subjects through the human lifespan. Neuroimage 2020; 214:116703. [PMID: 32151759 PMCID: PMC8482444 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116703] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/12/2019] [Revised: 01/21/2020] [Accepted: 03/02/2020] [Indexed: 02/05/2023] Open
Abstract
Diffusion MRI tractography produces massive sets of streamlines that need to be clustered into anatomically meaningful white-matter bundles. Conventional clustering techniques group streamlines based on their proximity in Euclidean space. We have developed AnatomiCuts, an unsupervised method for clustering tractography streamlines based on their neighboring anatomical structures, rather than their coordinates in Euclidean space. In this work, we show that the anatomical similarity metric used in AnatomiCuts can be extended to find corresponding clusters across subjects and across hemispheres, without inter-subject or inter-hemispheric registration. Our proposed approach enables group-wise tract cluster analysis, as well as studies of hemispheric asymmetry. We evaluate our approach on data from the pilot MGH-Harvard-USC Lifespan Human Connectome project, showing improved correspondence in tract clusters across 184 subjects aged 8-90. Our method shows up to 38% improvement in the overlap of corresponding clusters when comparing subjects with large age differences. The techniques presented here do not require registration to a template and can thus be applied to populations with large inter-subject variability, e.g., due to brain development, aging, or neurological disorders.
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22
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Hunt D, Dighe M, Gatenby C, Studholme C. Automatic, Age Consistent Reconstruction of the Corpus Callosum Guided by Coherency From In Utero Diffusion-Weighted MRI. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL IMAGING 2020; 39:601-610. [PMID: 31395540 PMCID: PMC7189742 DOI: 10.1109/tmi.2019.2932681] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/10/2023]
Abstract
Reconstruction of white matter connectivity in the fetal brain from in utero diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) faces many challenges, including subject motion, small anatomical scale, and limited image resolution and signal. These issues are compounded by the need to track significant changes in structural connectivity throughout development. We present an automated method for improved reliability and completeness of tract extraction across a wide range of gestational ages, based on the geometry of coherent patterns in streamline tractography, and apply it to the reconstruction of the corpus callosum. This method, focused specifically at addressing the challenges of fetal brain imaging, avoids depending on a tractography atlas, and handles variations in size, shape, and tissue properties of developing brains, both between subjects and across ages. Although tractography from in utero MRI generally suffers from a significant number of misleading and missing pathways, we demonstrate the feasibility of extracting the coherent bundle of the corpus callosum while avoiding inappropriate diversions into other tracts.
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23
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Challenges and Opportunities in Connectome Construction and Quantification in the Developing Human Fetal Brain. Top Magn Reson Imaging 2020; 28:265-273. [PMID: 31592993 DOI: 10.1097/rmr.0000000000000212] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/20/2022]
Abstract
The white matter structure of the human brain undergoes critical developmental milestones in utero, which we can observe noninvasively using diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging. In order to understand this fascinating developmental process, we must establish the variability inherent in such a challenging imaging environment and how measurable quantities can be transformed into meaningful connectomes. We review techniques for reconstructing and studying the brain connectome and explore promising opportunities for in utero studies that could lead to more accurate measurement of structural properties and allow for more refined and insightful analyses of the fetal brain. Opportunities for more sophisticated analyses of the properties of the brain and its dynamic changes have emerged in recent years, based on the development of iterative techniques to reconstruct motion-corrupted diffusion-weighted data. Although reconstruction quality is greatly improved, the treatment of fundamental quantities like edge strength requires careful treatment because of the specific challenges of imaging in utero. There are intriguing challenges to overcome, from those in analysis due to both imaging limitations and the significant changes in structural connectivity, to further image processing to address the specific properties of the target anatomy and quantification into a developmental connectome.
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24
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Kuhn T, Jin Y, Huang C, Kim Y, Nir TM, Gullett JM, Jones JD, Sayegh P, Chung C, Dang BH, Singer EJ, Shattuck DW, Jahanshad N, Bookheimer SY, Hinkin CH, Zhu H, Thompson PM, Thames AD. The joint effect of aging and HIV infection on microstructure of white matter bundles. Hum Brain Mapp 2019; 40:4370-4380. [PMID: 31271489 PMCID: PMC6865715 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.24708] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/16/2019] [Revised: 06/04/2019] [Accepted: 06/26/2019] [Indexed: 12/22/2022] Open
Abstract
Recent evidence suggests the aging process is accelerated by HIV. Degradation of white matter (WM) has been independently associated with HIV and healthy aging. Thus, WM may be vulnerable to joint effects of HIV and aging. Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) was conducted with HIV-seropositive (n = 72) and HIV-seronegative (n = 34) adults. DWI data underwent tractography, which was parcellated into 18 WM tracts of interest (TOIs). Functional Analysis of Diffusion Tensor Tract Statistics (FADTTS) regression was conducted assessing the joint effect of advanced age and HIV on fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD), axial diffusivity (AD), and radial diffusivity (RD) along TOI fibers. In addition to main effects of age and HIV on WM microstructure, the interactive effect of age and HIV was significantly related to lower FA and higher MD, AD, and RD across all TOIs. The location of findings was consistent with the clinical presentation of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders. While older age is related to poorer WM microstructure, its detrimental effect on WM is stronger among HIV+ relative to HIV- individuals. Loss of WM integrity in the context of advancing age may place HIV+ individuals at increased risk for brain and cognitive compromise.
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Affiliation(s)
- Taylor Kuhn
- Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral SciencesUniversity of California, Los AngelesLos AngelesCalifornia
| | - Yan Jin
- Imaging Genetics Center, Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics InstituteKeck School of Medicine, University of Southern CaliforniaMarina del ReyCalifornia
- Department of BiostatisticsUniversity of Texas MD Anderson Cancer CenterHoustonTexas
| | - Chao Huang
- Department of BiostatisticsUniversity of Texas MD Anderson Cancer CenterHoustonTexas
| | - Yeun Kim
- Department of NeurologyUniversity of California, Los AngelesLos AngelesCalifornia
| | - Talia M. Nir
- Imaging Genetics Center, Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics InstituteKeck School of Medicine, University of Southern CaliforniaMarina del ReyCalifornia
| | - Joseph M. Gullett
- Center for Cognitive Aging and MemoryUniversity of FloridaGainesvilleFlorida
| | - Jacob D. Jones
- Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral SciencesUniversity of California, Los AngelesLos AngelesCalifornia
- Department of PsychologyCalifornia State University San BernardinoSan BernardinoCalifornia
| | - Phillip Sayegh
- Department of PsychologyUniversity of California, Los AngelesLos AngelesCalifornia
| | - Caroline Chung
- Department of Radiation OncologyThe University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer CenterHoustonTexas
| | - Bianca H. Dang
- Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral SciencesUniversity of California, Los AngelesLos AngelesCalifornia
| | - Elyse J. Singer
- Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral SciencesUniversity of California, Los AngelesLos AngelesCalifornia
| | - David W. Shattuck
- Department of NeurologyUniversity of California, Los AngelesLos AngelesCalifornia
| | - Neda Jahanshad
- Imaging Genetics Center, Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics InstituteKeck School of Medicine, University of Southern CaliforniaMarina del ReyCalifornia
| | - Susan Y. Bookheimer
- Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral SciencesUniversity of California, Los AngelesLos AngelesCalifornia
| | - Charles H. Hinkin
- Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral SciencesUniversity of California, Los AngelesLos AngelesCalifornia
| | - Hongtu Zhu
- Department of BiostatisticsUniversity of Texas MD Anderson Cancer CenterHoustonTexas
- Department of Biostatistics, Gillings School of Global Public HealthUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel HillChapel HillNorth Carolina
| | - Paul M. Thompson
- Imaging Genetics Center, Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics InstituteKeck School of Medicine, University of Southern CaliforniaMarina del ReyCalifornia
| | - April D. Thames
- Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral SciencesUniversity of California, Los AngelesLos AngelesCalifornia
- Department of PsychologyUniversity of Southern CaliforniaLos AngelesCalifornia
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25
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Zöllei L, Jaimes C, Saliba E, Grant PE, Yendiki A. TRActs constrained by UnderLying INfant anatomy (TRACULInA): An automated probabilistic tractography tool with anatomical priors for use in the newborn brain. Neuroimage 2019; 199:1-17. [PMID: 31132451 PMCID: PMC6688923 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.05.051] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/07/2018] [Revised: 05/14/2019] [Accepted: 05/18/2019] [Indexed: 10/26/2022] Open
Abstract
The ongoing myelination of white-matter fiber bundles plays a significant role in brain development. However, reliable and consistent identification of these bundles from infant brain MRIs is often challenging due to inherently low diffusion anisotropy, as well as motion and other artifacts. In this paper we introduce a new tool for automated probabilistic tractography specifically designed for newborn infants. Our tool incorporates prior information about the anatomical neighborhood of white-matter pathways from a training data set. In our experiments, we evaluate this tool on data from both full-term and prematurely born infants and demonstrate that it can reconstruct known white-matter tracts in both groups robustly, even in the presence of differences between the training set and study subjects. Additionally, we evaluate it on a publicly available large data set of healthy term infants (UNC Early Brain Development Program). This paves the way for performing a host of sophisticated analyses in newborns that we have previously implemented for the adult brain, such as pointwise analysis along tracts and longitudinal analysis, in both health and disease.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lilla Zöllei
- Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, United States.
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26
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Choi SH, Kim YB, Cho ZH. Fiber-distance-based unsupervised clustering of MR tractography data. J Neurosci Methods 2019; 325:108361. [PMID: 31336061 DOI: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2019.108361] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/03/2019] [Revised: 06/25/2019] [Accepted: 07/11/2019] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND MR tractography from diffusion tensor imaging provides a non-invasive way to explore white matter pathways in the human brain. However, a challenge to extracting reliable anatomical information from these data is the use of reliable and effective clustering methodologies. In this paper, we implemented a new version of a robust unsupervised clustering method from MR tractography data using the density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN) algorithm. NEW METHOD Conventional DBSCAN clustering methods for MR tractography data use each fiber's start and end point as well as the distance between start and end points. Instead, in this study, we extracted and used a fiber-distance matrix generated for all fiber combinations from the tractography dataset in DBSCAN clustering. The two DBSCAN parameters-minimum point number and maximum radius of the neighborhood-were selected according to the value generated with the cluster stability index (CSI). RESULTS Performing the proposed CSI-optimized DBSCAN-based clustering method on MR tractography data of the superior longitudinal fasciculus generated 6 robust, non-overlapping, clusters that are neuroanatomically related. COMPARISON WITH EXISTING METHODS Conventional DBSCAN-based clustering methods have intrinsic error potential in the clustering results due to deviations in fiber shape and fiber location. The proposed method did not exhibit clustering error caused by deviation in fiber trajectory or fiber location. CONCLUSIONS We implemented a new, robust DBSCAN-based fiber clustering method for MR tractography data. The CSI-optimized DBSCAN-based unsupervised clustering is applicable to investigation of the neuroconnectome and the fiber structure of the brain.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sang-Han Choi
- Neuroscience Research Institute, Suwon University, 17, Wauangil, Bongdam-eup, Hwaseong-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea.
| | - Young-Bo Kim
- Depart of Neurosurgery, School of Medicine Gachon University, Incheon, South Korea.
| | - Zang-Hee Cho
- Neuroscience Research Institute, Suwon University, 17, Wauangil, Bongdam-eup, Hwaseong-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea; AICT, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea.
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27
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Zhang F, Wu Y, Norton I, Rathi Y, Golby AJ, O'Donnell LJ. Test-retest reproducibility of white matter parcellation using diffusion MRI tractography fiber clustering. Hum Brain Mapp 2019; 40:3041-3057. [PMID: 30875144 PMCID: PMC6548665 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.24579] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/07/2019] [Revised: 02/28/2019] [Accepted: 03/07/2019] [Indexed: 01/22/2023] Open
Abstract
There are two popular approaches for automated white matter parcellation using diffusion MRI tractography, including fiber clustering strategies that group white matter fibers according to their geometric trajectories and cortical-parcellation-based strategies that focus on the structural connectivity among different brain regions of interest. While multiple studies have assessed test-retest reproducibility of automated white matter parcellations using cortical-parcellation-based strategies, there are no existing studies of test-retest reproducibility of fiber clustering parcellation. In this work, we perform what we believe is the first study of fiber clustering white matter parcellation test-retest reproducibility. The assessment is performed on three test-retest diffusion MRI datasets including a total of 255 subjects across genders, a broad age range (5-82 years), health conditions (autism, Parkinson's disease and healthy subjects), and imaging acquisition protocols (three different sites). A comprehensive evaluation is conducted for a fiber clustering method that leverages an anatomically curated fiber clustering white matter atlas, with comparison to a popular cortical-parcellation-based method. The two methods are compared for the two main white matter parcellation applications of dividing the entire white matter into parcels (i.e., whole brain white matter parcellation) and identifying particular anatomical fiber tracts (i.e., anatomical fiber tract parcellation). Test-retest reproducibility is measured using both geometric and diffusion features, including volumetric overlap (wDice) and relative difference of fractional anisotropy. Our experimental results in general indicate that the fiber clustering method produced more reproducible white matter parcellations than the cortical-parcellation-based method.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fan Zhang
- Brigham and Women's HospitalHarvard Medical SchoolBostonMassachusetts
| | - Ye Wu
- Brigham and Women's HospitalHarvard Medical SchoolBostonMassachusetts
| | - Isaiah Norton
- Brigham and Women's HospitalHarvard Medical SchoolBostonMassachusetts
| | - Yogesh Rathi
- Brigham and Women's HospitalHarvard Medical SchoolBostonMassachusetts
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28
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Fan X, Duan Y, Cheng S, Zhang Y, Cheng H. Fast density-peaks clustering for registration-free pediatric white matter tract analysis. Artif Intell Med 2019; 96:1-11. [PMID: 31164202 DOI: 10.1016/j.artmed.2019.03.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/30/2018] [Revised: 02/27/2019] [Accepted: 03/01/2019] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
Abstract
Clustering white matter (WM) tracts from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is primarily important for quantitative analysis on pediatric brain development. A recently developed algorithm, density peaks (DP) clustering, demonstrates great robustness to the complex structural variations of WM tracts without any prior templates. Nevertheless, the calculation of densities, the core step of DP, is time consuming especially when the number of WM fibers is huge. In this paper, we propose a fast algorithm that accelerates the density computation about 50 times over the original one. We convert the global calculation for the density as well as critical parameter in the process into local computations, and develop a binary tree structure to orderly store the neighbors for these local computations. Hence, the density computation turns out to be a direct access of the structure, rendering significantly computational saving. Performing experiments on synthetic point data and the JHU-DTI data set and comparing results of our fast DP algorithm and existing clustering methods, we can validate the efficiency and effectiveness of our fast DP algorithm. Finally, we demonstrate the application of the proposed algorithm on the analysis of pediatric WM tract development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xin Fan
- DUT-RU International School of Information Science and Technology, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China; Key Laboratory for Ubiquitous Network and Service Software of Liaoning Province, Dalian, China
| | - Yuzhuo Duan
- DUT-RU International School of Information Science and Technology, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China; Key Laboratory for Ubiquitous Network and Service Software of Liaoning Province, Dalian, China
| | - Shichao Cheng
- Key Laboratory for Ubiquitous Network and Service Software of Liaoning Province, Dalian, China; School of Mathematical Science, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China
| | - Yuxi Zhang
- DUT-RU International School of Information Science and Technology, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China; Key Laboratory for Ubiquitous Network and Service Software of Liaoning Province, Dalian, China
| | - Hua Cheng
- Department of Radiology, Beijing Children's Hospital, Captital Medical University, National Center for Children's Health, China.
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29
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Zhang Z, Sejdić E. Radiological images and machine learning: Trends, perspectives, and prospects. Comput Biol Med 2019; 108:354-370. [PMID: 31054502 PMCID: PMC6531364 DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2019.02.017] [Citation(s) in RCA: 63] [Impact Index Per Article: 12.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/25/2018] [Revised: 02/19/2019] [Accepted: 02/19/2019] [Indexed: 01/18/2023]
Abstract
The application of machine learning to radiological images is an increasingly active research area that is expected to grow in the next five to ten years. Recent advances in machine learning have the potential to recognize and classify complex patterns from different radiological imaging modalities such as x-rays, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography imaging. In many applications, machine learning based systems have shown comparable performance to human decision-making. The applications of machine learning are the key ingredients of future clinical decision making and monitoring systems. This review covers the fundamental concepts behind various machine learning techniques and their applications in several radiological imaging areas, such as medical image segmentation, brain function studies and neurological disease diagnosis, as well as computer-aided systems, image registration, and content-based image retrieval systems. Synchronistically, we will briefly discuss current challenges and future directions regarding the application of machine learning in radiological imaging. By giving insight on how take advantage of machine learning powered applications, we expect that clinicians can prevent and diagnose diseases more accurately and efficiently.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zhenwei Zhang
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Swanson School of Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, 15261, USA
| | - Ervin Sejdić
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Swanson School of Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, 15261, USA.
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30
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Huang H, Liu X, Jin Y, Lee SW, Wee CY, Shen D. Enhancing the representation of functional connectivity networks by fusing multi-view information for autism spectrum disorder diagnosis. Hum Brain Mapp 2018; 40:833-854. [PMID: 30357998 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.24415] [Citation(s) in RCA: 32] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/17/2018] [Revised: 08/17/2018] [Accepted: 09/26/2018] [Indexed: 01/10/2023] Open
Abstract
Functional connectivity network provides novel insights on how distributed brain regions are functionally integrated, and its deviations from healthy brain have recently been employed to identify biomarkers for neuropsychiatric disorders. However, most of brain network analysis methods utilized features extracted only from one functional connectivity network for brain disease detection and cannot provide a comprehensive representation on the subtle disruptions of brain functional organization induced by neuropsychiatric disorders. Inspired by the principles of multi-view learning which utilizes information from multiple views to enhance object representation, we propose a novel multiple network based framework to enhance the representation of functional connectivity networks by fusing the common and complementary information conveyed in multiple networks. Specifically, four functional connectivity networks corresponding to the four adjacent values of regularization parameter are generated via a sparse regression model with group constraint ( l2,1 -norm), to enhance the common intrinsic topological structure and limit the error rate caused by different views. To obtain a set of more meaningful and discriminative features, we propose using a modified version of weighted clustering coefficients to quantify the subtle differences of each group-sparse network at local level. We then linearly fuse the selected features from each individual network via a multi-kernel support vector machine for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis. The proposed framework achieves an accuracy of 79.35%, outperforming all the compared single network methods for at least 7% improvement. Moreover, compared with other multiple network methods, our method also achieves the best performance, that is, with at least 11% improvement in accuracy.
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Affiliation(s)
- Huifang Huang
- School of Computer and Information Technology, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China.,Biomedical Research Imaging Center (BRIC) and Department of Radiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
| | - Xingdan Liu
- School of Computer and Information Technology, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China
| | - Yan Jin
- Biomedical Research Imaging Center (BRIC) and Department of Radiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
| | - Seong-Whan Lee
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Chong-Yaw Wee
- Biomedical Research Imaging Center (BRIC) and Department of Radiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.,Department of Biomedical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore
| | - Dinggang Shen
- Biomedical Research Imaging Center (BRIC) and Department of Radiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.,Department of Brain and Cognitive Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
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31
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Zhang F, Wu Y, Norton I, Rigolo L, Rathi Y, Makris N, O'Donnell LJ. An anatomically curated fiber clustering white matter atlas for consistent white matter tract parcellation across the lifespan. Neuroimage 2018; 179:429-447. [PMID: 29920375 PMCID: PMC6080311 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.06.027] [Citation(s) in RCA: 114] [Impact Index Per Article: 19.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/02/2018] [Revised: 05/01/2018] [Accepted: 06/08/2018] [Indexed: 12/15/2022] Open
Abstract
This work presents an anatomically curated white matter atlas to enable consistent white matter tract parcellation across different populations. Leveraging a well-established computational pipeline for fiber clustering, we create a tract-based white matter atlas including information from 100 subjects. A novel anatomical annotation method is proposed that leverages population-based brain anatomical information and expert neuroanatomical knowledge to annotate and categorize the fiber clusters. A total of 256 white matter structures are annotated in the proposed atlas, which provides one of the most comprehensive tract-based white matter atlases covering the entire brain to date. These structures are composed of 58 deep white matter tracts including major long range association and projection tracts, commissural tracts, and tracts related to the brainstem and cerebellar connections, plus 198 short and medium range superficial fiber clusters organized into 16 categories according to the brain lobes they connect. Potential false positive connections are annotated in the atlas to enable their exclusion from analysis or visualization. In addition, the proposed atlas allows for a whole brain white matter parcellation into 800 fiber clusters to enable whole brain connectivity analyses. The atlas and related computational tools are open-source and publicly available. We evaluate the proposed atlas using a testing dataset of 584 diffusion MRI scans from multiple independently acquired populations, across genders, the lifespan (1 day-82 years), and different health conditions (healthy control, neuropsychiatric disorders, and brain tumor patients). Experimental results show successful white matter parcellation across subjects from different populations acquired on multiple scanners, irrespective of age, gender or disease indications. Over 99% of the fiber tracts annotated in the atlas were detected in all subjects on average. One advantage in terms of robustness is that the tract-based pipeline does not require any cortical or subcortical segmentations, which can have limited success in young children and patients with brain tumors or other structural lesions. We believe this is the first demonstration of consistent automated white matter tract parcellation across the full lifespan from birth to advanced age.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fan Zhang
- Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA.
| | - Ye Wu
- Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
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32
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Petrušić I, Daković M, Kačar K, Mićić O, Zidverc-Trajković J. Migraine with aura and white matter tract changes. Acta Neurol Belg 2018; 118:485-491. [PMID: 30006859 DOI: 10.1007/s13760-018-0984-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/27/2018] [Accepted: 07/10/2018] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
We aimed to explore whether a migraine with aura (MA) is associated with structural changes in tracts of a white matter and to compare parameters of diffusivity between subgroups in migraineurs. Forty-three MA and 20 healthy subjects (HS), balanced by sex and age, were selected for this study. Analysis of diffusion tensor parameters was used to identify differences between MA patients and HS, and then between MA subgroups. A diffusion tensor probabilistic tractography analysis showed that there is no difference between MA patients and HS. However, using more-liberal uncorrected statistical threshold, we noted a trend in MA patients toward lower diffusivity indices of selected white matter tracts located in the forceps minor and right anterior thalamic radiation (ATR), superior longitudinal fasciculus (temporal part) (SLFT), cingulum-cingulate tract, and left uncinate fasciculus. Migraineurs who experienced somatosensory and dysphasic aura, besides visual symptoms, had tendency toward lower diffusivity indices, relative to migraineurs who experienced only visual symptoms, in the right inferior longitudinal fasciculus, forceps minor, and right superior longitudinal fasciculus (parietal part), SLFT, and cingulum-angular bundle. Aura frequency were negatively correlated with axial diffusivity and mean diffusivity of the right ATR (partial correlation = - 0.474; p = 0.002; partial correlation = - 0.460; p = 0.002), respectively. There were no significant differences between MA patients and HS, neither between MA subgroups. Migraineurs with abundant symptoms during the aura possibly have more myelinated fibers relative to those who experience only visual symptoms. Lower diffusivity indices of the right ATR are linked to more frequent migraine with aura attacks.
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Affiliation(s)
- Igor Petrušić
- Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.
- Faculty of Physical Chemistry, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.
| | - Marko Daković
- Faculty of Physical Chemistry, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
| | - Katarina Kačar
- Department of Radiology, Special hospital for prevention and Treatment of Cerebrovascular Diseases "Sveti Sava", Belgrade, Serbia
| | - Olivera Mićić
- Faculty of Physical Chemistry, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
| | - Jasna Zidverc-Trajković
- Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
- Center for headaches, Neurology Clinic, Clinical Center of Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia
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33
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Wasserthal J, Neher P, Maier-Hein KH. TractSeg - Fast and accurate white matter tract segmentation. Neuroimage 2018; 183:239-253. [PMID: 30086412 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.07.070] [Citation(s) in RCA: 296] [Impact Index Per Article: 49.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/16/2018] [Revised: 06/29/2018] [Accepted: 07/31/2018] [Indexed: 11/29/2022] Open
Abstract
The individual course of white matter fiber tracts is an important factor for analysis of white matter characteristics in healthy and diseased brains. Diffusion-weighted MRI tractography in combination with region-based or clustering-based selection of streamlines is a unique combination of tools which enables the in-vivo delineation and analysis of anatomically well-known tracts. This, however, currently requires complex, computationally intensive processing pipelines which take a lot of time to set up. TractSeg is a novel convolutional neural network-based approach that directly segments tracts in the field of fiber orientation distribution function (fODF) peaks without using tractography, image registration or parcellation. We demonstrate that the proposed approach is much faster than existing methods while providing unprecedented accuracy, using a population of 105 subjects from the Human Connectome Project. We also show initial evidence that TractSeg is able to generalize to differently acquired data sets for most of the bundles. The code and data are openly available at https://github.com/MIC-DKFZ/TractSeg/ and https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1088277, respectively.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jakob Wasserthal
- Division of Medical Image Computing (MIC), German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Im Neuenheimer Feld 581, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany; Medical Faculty Heidelberg, University of Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 672, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany.
| | - Peter Neher
- Division of Medical Image Computing (MIC), German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Im Neuenheimer Feld 581, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany.
| | - Klaus H Maier-Hein
- Division of Medical Image Computing (MIC), German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Im Neuenheimer Feld 581, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany; Section of Automated Image Analysis, Heidelberg University Hospital, Im Neuenheimer Feld 672, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany.
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34
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Zhang Z, Descoteaux M, Zhang J, Girard G, Chamberland M, Dunson D, Srivastava A, Zhu H. Mapping population-based structural connectomes. Neuroimage 2018; 172:130-145. [PMID: 29355769 PMCID: PMC5910206 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.12.064] [Citation(s) in RCA: 51] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/10/2017] [Revised: 11/09/2017] [Accepted: 12/20/2017] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
Advances in understanding the structural connectomes of human brain require improved approaches for the construction, comparison and integration of high-dimensional whole-brain tractography data from a large number of individuals. This article develops a population-based structural connectome (PSC) mapping framework to address these challenges. PSC simultaneously characterizes a large number of white matter bundles within and across different subjects by registering different subjects' brains based on coarse cortical parcellations, compressing the bundles of each connection, and extracting novel connection weights. A robust tractography algorithm and streamline post-processing techniques, including dilation of gray matter regions, streamline cutting, and outlier streamline removal are applied to improve the robustness of the extracted structural connectomes. The developed PSC framework can be used to reproducibly extract binary networks, weighted networks and streamline-based brain connectomes. We apply the PSC to Human Connectome Project data to illustrate its application in characterizing normal variations and heritability of structural connectomes in healthy subjects.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zhengwu Zhang
- Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology, Rochester, NY, USA; Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute, Durham, NC, USA
| | - Maxime Descoteaux
- Sherbrooke Connectivity Imaging Lab (SCIL), Computer Science Department, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada
| | - Jingwen Zhang
- Department of Biostatistics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
| | - Gabriel Girard
- Sherbrooke Connectivity Imaging Lab (SCIL), Computer Science Department, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada
| | - Maxime Chamberland
- Sherbrooke Connectivity Imaging Lab (SCIL), Computer Science Department, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada
| | - David Dunson
- Department of Statistical Science, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
| | - Anuj Srivastava
- Department of Statistics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA
| | - Hongtu Zhu
- Department of Biostatistics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA; Department of Biostatistics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA.
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35
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Dennis EL, Babikian T, Alger J, Rashid F, Villalon-Reina JE, Jin Y, Olsen A, Mink R, Babbitt C, Johnson J, Giza CC, Thompson PM, Asarnow RF. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy of fiber tracts in children with traumatic brain injury: A combined MRS - Diffusion MRI study. Hum Brain Mapp 2018; 39:3759-3768. [PMID: 29749094 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.24209] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/28/2018] [Revised: 04/30/2018] [Accepted: 05/01/2018] [Indexed: 01/05/2023] Open
Abstract
Traumatic brain injury can cause extensive damage to the white matter (WM) of the brain. These disruptions can be especially damaging in children, whose brains are still maturing. Diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) is the most commonly used method to assess WM organization, but it has limited resolution to differentiate causes of WM disruption. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) yields spectra showing the levels of neurometabolites that can indicate neuronal/axonal health, inflammation, membrane proliferation/turnover, and other cellular processes that are on-going post-injury. Previous analyses on this dataset revealed a significant division within the msTBI patient group, based on interhemispheric transfer time (IHTT); one subgroup of patients (TBI-normal) showed evidence of recovery over time, while the other showed continuing degeneration (TBI-slow). We combined dMRI with MRS to better understand WM disruptions in children with moderate-severe traumatic brain injury (msTBI). Tracts with poorer WM organization, as shown by lower FA and higher MD and RD, also showed lower N-acetylaspartate (NAA), a marker of neuronal and axonal health and myelination. We did not find lower NAA in tracts with normal WM organization. Choline, a marker of inflammation, membrane turnover, or gliosis, did not show such associations. We further show that multi-modal imaging can improve outcome prediction over a single modality, as well as over earlier cognitive function measures. Our results suggest that demyelination plays an important role in WM disruption post-injury in a subgroup of msTBI children and indicate the utility of multi-modal imaging.
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Affiliation(s)
- Emily L Dennis
- Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Imaging Genetics Center, Mary and Mark Stevens Institute for Neuroimaging and Informatics, Marina del Rey, California.,Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, UCLA, Los Angeles, California
| | - Talin Babikian
- Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, UCLA, Los Angeles, California.,Dept of Neurosurgery and Division of Pediatric Neurology, Mattel Children's Hospital, UCLA Brain Injury Research Center, Los Angeles, California
| | - Jeffry Alger
- Departments of Neurology and Radiology, UCLA, Los Angeles, California.,NeuroSpectroScopics LLC, Sherman Oaks, California
| | - Faisal Rashid
- Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Imaging Genetics Center, Mary and Mark Stevens Institute for Neuroimaging and Informatics, Marina del Rey, California
| | - Julio E Villalon-Reina
- Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Imaging Genetics Center, Mary and Mark Stevens Institute for Neuroimaging and Informatics, Marina del Rey, California
| | - Yan Jin
- Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Imaging Genetics Center, Mary and Mark Stevens Institute for Neuroimaging and Informatics, Marina del Rey, California
| | - Alexander Olsen
- Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, UCLA, Los Angeles, California.,Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.,Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, St. Olavs Hospital, Trondheim University Hospital, Trondheim, Norway
| | - Richard Mink
- Department of Pediatrics, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Los Angeles BioMedical Research Institute, Torrance, California
| | | | - Jeffrey Johnson
- Department of Pediatrics, LAC+USC Medical Center, Los Angeles, California
| | - Christopher C Giza
- Dept of Neurosurgery and Division of Pediatric Neurology, Mattel Children's Hospital, UCLA Brain Injury Research Center, Los Angeles, California.,Brain Research Institute, UCLA, Los Angeles, California
| | - Paul M Thompson
- Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Imaging Genetics Center, Mary and Mark Stevens Institute for Neuroimaging and Informatics, Marina del Rey, California.,Departments of Neurology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Radiology, Engineering, and Ophthalmology, USC, Los Angeles, California
| | - Robert F Asarnow
- Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, UCLA, Los Angeles, California.,Department of Psychology, UCLA, Los Angeles, California.,Brain Research Institute, UCLA, Los Angeles, California
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36
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Ugurlu D, Firat Z, Türe U, Unal G. Neighborhood resolved fiber orientation distributions (NRFOD) in automatic labeling of white matter fiber pathways. Med Image Anal 2018. [PMID: 29523000 DOI: 10.1016/j.media.2018.02.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/17/2022]
Abstract
Accurate digital representation of major white matter bundles in the brain is an important goal in neuroscience image computing since the representations can be used for surgical planning, intra-patient longitudinal analysis and inter-subject population connectivity studies. Reconstructing desired fiber bundles generally involves manual selection of regions of interest by an expert, which is subject to user bias and fatigue, hence an automation is desirable. To that end, we first present a novel anatomical representation based on Neighborhood Resolved Fiber Orientation Distributions (NRFOD) along the fibers. The resolved fiber orientations are obtained by generalized q-sampling imaging (GQI) and a subsequent diffusion decomposition method. A fiber-to-fiber distance measure between the proposed fiber representations is then used in a density-based clustering framework to select the clusters corresponding to the major pathways of interest. In addition, neuroanatomical priors are utilized to constrain the set of candidate fibers before density-based clustering. The proposed fiber clustering approach is exemplified on automation of the reconstruction of the major fiber pathways in the brainstem: corticospinal tract (CST); medial lemniscus (ML); middle cerebellar peduncle (MCP); inferior cerebellar peduncle (ICP); superior cerebellar peduncle (SCP). Experimental results on Human Connectome Project (HCP)'s publicly available "WU-Minn 500 Subjects + MEG2 dataset" and expert evaluations demonstrate the potential of the proposed fiber clustering method in brainstem white matter structure analysis.
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Affiliation(s)
- Devran Ugurlu
- Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey
| | - Zeynep Firat
- Radiology Department, Yeditepe University Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey
| | - Uğur Türe
- Neurosurgery Department, Yeditepe University Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey
| | - Gozde Unal
- Computer Engineering Department, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey.
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37
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Dennis EL, Babikian T, Giza CC, Thompson PM, Asarnow RF. Neuroimaging of the Injured Pediatric Brain: Methods and New Lessons. Neuroscientist 2018; 24:652-670. [PMID: 29488436 DOI: 10.1177/1073858418759489] [Citation(s) in RCA: 29] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a significant public health problem in the United States, especially for children and adolescents. Current epidemiological data estimate over 600,000 patients younger than 20 years are treated for TBI in emergency rooms annually. While many patients experience a full recovery, for others there can be long-lasting cognitive, neurological, psychological, and behavioral disruptions. TBI in youth can disrupt ongoing brain development and create added family stress during a formative period. The neuroimaging methods used to assess brain injury improve each year, providing researchers a more detailed characterization of the injury and recovery process. In this review, we cover current imaging methods used to quantify brain disruption post-injury, including structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), diffusion MRI, functional MRI, resting state fMRI, and magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), with brief coverage of other methods, including electroencephalography (EEG), single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), and positron emission tomography (PET). We include studies focusing on pediatric moderate-severe TBI from 2 months post-injury and beyond. While the morbidity of pediatric TBI is considerable, continuing advances in imaging methods have the potential to identify new treatment targets that can lead to significant improvements in outcome.
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Affiliation(s)
- Emily L Dennis
- 1 Imaging Genetics Center, Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, Keck School of Medicine of University Southern California, Marina del Rey, CA, USA
| | - Talin Babikian
- 2 Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.,3 UCLA Brain Injury Research Center, Department of Neurosurgery and Division of Pediatric Neurology, Mattel Children's Hospital, Los Angeles, CA, USA.,4 UCLA Steve Tisch BrainSPORT Program, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Christopher C Giza
- 3 UCLA Brain Injury Research Center, Department of Neurosurgery and Division of Pediatric Neurology, Mattel Children's Hospital, Los Angeles, CA, USA.,4 UCLA Steve Tisch BrainSPORT Program, Los Angeles, CA, USA.,5 Brain Research Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Paul M Thompson
- 1 Imaging Genetics Center, Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, Keck School of Medicine of University Southern California, Marina del Rey, CA, USA.,6 Departments of Neurology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Radiology, Engineering, and Ophthalmology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Robert F Asarnow
- 2 Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.,4 UCLA Steve Tisch BrainSPORT Program, Los Angeles, CA, USA.,5 Brain Research Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.,7 Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
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38
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Sharmin N, Olivetti E, Avesani P. White Matter Tract Segmentation as Multiple Linear Assignment Problems. Front Neurosci 2018; 11:754. [PMID: 29467600 PMCID: PMC5808221 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2017.00754] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/21/2017] [Accepted: 12/28/2017] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) allows to reconstruct the main pathways of axons within the white matter of the brain as a set of polylines, called streamlines. The set of streamlines of the whole brain is called the tractogram. Organizing tractograms into anatomically meaningful structures, called tracts, is known as the tract segmentation problem, with important applications to neurosurgical planning and tractometry. Automatic tract segmentation techniques can be unsupervised or supervised. A common criticism of unsupervised methods, like clustering, is that there is no guarantee to obtain anatomically meaningful tracts. In this work, we focus on supervised tract segmentation, which is driven by prior knowledge from anatomical atlases or from examples, i.e., segmented tracts from different subjects. We present a supervised tract segmentation method that segments a given tract of interest in the tractogram of a new subject using multiple examples as prior information. Our proposed tract segmentation method is based on the idea of streamline correspondence i.e., on finding corresponding streamlines across different tractograms. In the literature, streamline correspondence has been addressed with the nearest neighbor (NN) strategy. Differently, here we formulate the problem of streamline correspondence as a linear assignment problem (LAP), which is a cornerstone of combinatorial optimization. With respect to the NN, the LAP introduces a constraint of one-to-one correspondence between streamlines, that forces the correspondences to follow the local anatomical differences between the example and the target tract, neglected by the NN. In the proposed solution, we combined the Jonker-Volgenant algorithm (LAPJV) for solving the LAP together with an efficient way of computing the nearest neighbors of a streamline, which massively reduces the total amount of computations needed to segment a tract. Moreover, we propose a ranking strategy to merge correspondences coming from different examples. We validate the proposed method on tractograms generated from the human connectome project (HCP) dataset and compare the segmentations with the NN method and the ROI-based method. The results show that LAP-based segmentation is vastly more accurate than ROI-based segmentation and substantially more accurate than the NN strategy. We provide a Free/OpenSource implementation of the proposed method.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nusrat Sharmin
- NeuroInformatics Laboratory, Bruno Kessler Foundation, Trento, Italy.,Center for Mind and Brain Sciences, University of Trento, Trento, Italy
| | - Emanuele Olivetti
- NeuroInformatics Laboratory, Bruno Kessler Foundation, Trento, Italy.,Center for Mind and Brain Sciences, University of Trento, Trento, Italy
| | - Paolo Avesani
- NeuroInformatics Laboratory, Bruno Kessler Foundation, Trento, Italy.,Center for Mind and Brain Sciences, University of Trento, Trento, Italy
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39
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Siless V, Chang K, Fischl B, Yendiki A. AnatomiCuts: Hierarchical clustering of tractography streamlines based on anatomical similarity. Neuroimage 2018; 166:32-45. [PMID: 29100937 PMCID: PMC6152885 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.10.058] [Citation(s) in RCA: 40] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/22/2017] [Revised: 10/18/2017] [Accepted: 10/26/2017] [Indexed: 01/25/2023] Open
Abstract
Diffusion MRI tractography produces massive sets of streamlines that contain a wealth of information on brain connections. The size of these datasets creates a need for automated clustering methods to group the streamlines into meaningful bundles. Conventional clustering techniques group streamlines based on their spatial coordinates. Neuroanatomists, however, define white-matter bundles based on the anatomical structures that they go through or next to, rather than their spatial coordinates. Thus we propose a similarity measure for clustering streamlines based on their position relative to cortical and subcortical brain regions. We incorporate this measure into a hierarchical clustering algorithm and compare it to a measure that relies on Euclidean distance, using data from the Human Connectome Project. We show that the anatomical similarity measure leads to a 20% improvement in the overlap of clusters with manually labeled tracts. Importantly, this is achieved without introducing any prior information from a tract atlas into the clustering algorithm, therefore without imposing the existence of any named tracts.
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Affiliation(s)
- Viviana Siless
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
| | - Ken Chang
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Bruce Fischl
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Anastasia Yendiki
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
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40
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Zhang F, Wu W, Ning L, McAnulty G, Waber D, Gagoski B, Sarill K, Hamoda HM, Song Y, Cai W, Rathi Y, O'Donnell LJ. Suprathreshold fiber cluster statistics: Leveraging white matter geometry to enhance tractography statistical analysis. Neuroimage 2018; 171:341-354. [PMID: 29337279 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.01.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/08/2017] [Revised: 01/04/2018] [Accepted: 01/05/2018] [Indexed: 12/13/2022] Open
Abstract
This work presents a suprathreshold fiber cluster (STFC) method that leverages the whole brain fiber geometry to enhance statistical group difference analyses. The proposed method consists of 1) a well-established study-specific data-driven tractography parcellation to obtain white matter tract parcels and 2) a newly proposed nonparametric, permutation-test-based STFC method to identify significant differences between study populations. The basic idea of our method is that a white matter parcel's neighborhood (nearby parcels with similar white matter anatomy) can support the parcel's statistical significance when correcting for multiple comparisons. We propose an adaptive parcel neighborhood strategy to allow suprathreshold fiber cluster formation that is robust to anatomically varying inter-parcel distances. The method is demonstrated by application to a multi-shell diffusion MRI dataset from 59 individuals, including 30 attention deficit hyperactivity disorder patients and 29 healthy controls. Evaluations are conducted using both synthetic and in-vivo data. The results indicate that the STFC method gives greater sensitivity in finding group differences in white matter tract parcels compared to several traditional multiple comparison correction methods.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fan Zhang
- Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA.
| | - Weining Wu
- College of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin, China; Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
| | - Lipeng Ning
- Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
| | - Gloria McAnulty
- Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
| | - Deborah Waber
- Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
| | - Borjan Gagoski
- Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
| | - Kiera Sarill
- Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
| | - Hesham M Hamoda
- Department of Psychiatry, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
| | - Yang Song
- School of Information Technologies, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
| | - Weidong Cai
- School of Information Technologies, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
| | - Yogesh Rathi
- Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
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41
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Gupta V, Prasad G, Thompson P. A volumetric conformal mapping approach for clustering white matter fibers in the brain. SPECTRAL AND SHAPE ANALYSIS IN MEDICAL IMAGING : FIRST INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP, SESAMI 2016, HELD IN CONJUNCTION WITH MICCAI 2016, ATHENS, GREECE, OCTOBER 21, 2016 : REVISED SELECTED PAPERS. SESAMI (WORKSHOP) (1ST : 2016 : ATHENS, GREECE) 2017; 10126:3-14. [PMID: 29177252 DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-51237-2_1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/20/2022]
Abstract
The human brain may be considered as a genus-0 shape, topologically equivalent to a sphere. Various methods have been used in the past to transform the brain surface to that of a sphere using harmonic energy minimization methods used for cortical surface matching. However, very few methods have studied volumetric parameterization of the brain using a spherical embedding. Volumetric parameterization is typically used for complicated geometric problems like shape matching, morphing and isogeometric analysis. Using conformal mapping techniques, we can establish a bijective mapping between the brain and the topologically equivalent sphere. Our hypothesis is that shape analysis problems are simplified when the shape is defined in an intrinsic coordinate system. Our goal is to establish such a coordinate system for the brain. The efficacy of the method is demonstrated with a white matter clustering problem. Initial results show promise for future investigation in these parameterization technique and its application to other problems related to computational anatomy like registration and segmentation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Vikash Gupta
- Imaging Genetics Center, University of Southern California
| | | | - Paul Thompson
- Imaging Genetics Center, University of Southern California
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42
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Olsen A, Dennis EL, Evensen KAI, Husby Hollund IM, Løhaugen GCC, Thompson PM, Brubakk AM, Eikenes L, Håberg AK. Preterm birth leads to hyper-reactive cognitive control processing and poor white matter organization in adulthood. Neuroimage 2017; 167:419-428. [PMID: 29191480 PMCID: PMC6625518 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.11.055] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/08/2017] [Revised: 11/08/2017] [Accepted: 11/22/2017] [Indexed: 11/30/2022] Open
Abstract
Individuals born preterm with very low birth weight (VLBW; birth weight ≤ 1500 g) are at high risk for perinatal brain injuries and deviant brain development, leading to increased chances of later cognitive, emotional, and behavioral problems. Here we investigated the neuronal underpinnings of both reactive and proactive cognitive control processes in adults with VLBW. We included 32 adults born preterm with VLBW (before 37th week of gestation) and 32 term-born controls (birth weight ≥10th percentile for gestational age) between 22 and 24 years of age that have been followed prospectively since birth. Participants performed a well-validated Not-X continuous performance test (CPT) adapted for use in a mixed block- and event-related fMRI protocol. BOLD fMRI and DTI data was acquired on a 3T scanner. Performance on the Not-X CPT was highly similar between groups. However, the VLBW group demonstrated hyper-reactive cognitive control processing and disrupted white matter organization. The hyper-reactive brain activation signature in VLBW adults was associated with lower gestational age, lower fluid intelligence score, and anxiety problems. Automated Multi-Atlas Tract Extraction (AutoMATE) analyses revealed that this disruption of normal brain function was accompanied by poorer white matter organization in the anterior thalamic radiation and the cingulum, as reflected in both reduced fractional anisotropy and increased mean diffusivity. These findings show that the preterm behavioral phenotype is associated with predominantly reactive-, rather than proactive cognitive control processing, as well as white matter abnormalities, that may underlie common difficulties that many preterm born individuals experience in everyday life.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexander Olsen
- Department of Psychology, NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway; Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, St. Olavs Hospital, Trondheim University Hospital, Trondheim, Norway; Department of Circulation and Medical Imaging, NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.
| | - Emily L Dennis
- Imaging Genetics Center, Stevens Institute for Neuroimaging and Informatics, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey, CA, USA
| | - Kari Anne I Evensen
- Department of Laboratory Medicine, Children's and Women's Health, NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway; Department of Public Health and Nursing, NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway; Department of Physiotherapy, Trondheim Municipality, Trondheim, Norway
| | - Ingrid Marie Husby Hollund
- Department of Laboratory Medicine, Children's and Women's Health, NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
| | | | - Paul M Thompson
- Imaging Genetics Center, Stevens Institute for Neuroimaging and Informatics, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey, CA, USA
| | - Ann-Mari Brubakk
- Department of Laboratory Medicine, Children's and Women's Health, NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
| | - Live Eikenes
- Department of Circulation and Medical Imaging, NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
| | - Asta K Håberg
- Department of Neuromedicine, NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway; Department of Medical Imaging, St. Olavs Hospital, Trondheim University Hospital, Trondheim, Norway
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43
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Daianu M, Mendez MF, Baboyan VG, Jin Y, Melrose RJ, Jimenez EE, Thompson PM. An advanced white matter tract analysis in frontotemporal dementia and early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Brain Imaging Behav 2017; 10:1038-1053. [PMID: 26515192 PMCID: PMC5167220 DOI: 10.1007/s11682-015-9458-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 32] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
Cortical and subcortical nuclei degenerate in the dementias, but less is known about changes in the white matter tracts that connect them. To better understand white matter changes in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) and early-onset Alzheimer’s disease (EOAD), we used a novel approach to extract full 3D profiles of fiber bundles from diffusion-weighted MRI (DWI) and map white matter abnormalities onto detailed models of each pathway. The result is a spatially complex picture of tract-by-tract microstructural changes. Our atlas of tracts for each disease consists of 21 anatomically clustered and recognizable white matter tracts generated from whole-brain tractography in 20 patients with bvFTD, 23 with age-matched EOAD, and 33 healthy elderly controls. To analyze the landscape of white matter abnormalities, we used a point-wise tract correspondence method along the 3D profiles of the tracts and quantified the pathway disruptions using common diffusion metrics – fractional anisotropy, mean, radial, and axial diffusivity. We tested the hypothesis that bvFTD and EOAD are associated with preferential degeneration in specific neural networks. We mapped axonal tract damage that was best detected with mean and radial diffusivity metrics, supporting our network hypothesis, highly statistically significant and more sensitive than widely studied fractional anisotropy reductions. From white matter diffusivity, we identified abnormalities in bvFTD in all 21 tracts of interest but especially in the bilateral uncinate fasciculus, frontal callosum, anterior thalamic radiations, cingulum bundles and left superior longitudinal fasciculus. This network of white matter alterations extends beyond the most commonly studied tracts, showing greater white matter abnormalities in bvFTD versus controls and EOAD patients. In EOAD, network alterations involved more posterior white matter – the parietal sector of the corpus callosum and parahipoccampal cingulum bilaterally. Widespread but distinctive white matter alterations are a key feature of the pathophysiology of these two forms of dementia.
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Affiliation(s)
- Madelaine Daianu
- Imaging Genetics Center, Mark & Mary Stevens Institute for Neuroimaging & Informatics, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey, CA, USA.,Department of Neurology, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Mario F Mendez
- Behavioral Neurology Program, Department of Neurology, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Vatche G Baboyan
- Imaging Genetics Center, Mark & Mary Stevens Institute for Neuroimaging & Informatics, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey, CA, USA
| | - Yan Jin
- Imaging Genetics Center, Mark & Mary Stevens Institute for Neuroimaging & Informatics, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey, CA, USA
| | - Rebecca J Melrose
- Brain, Behavior, and Aging Research Center, VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, Los Angeles, CA, USA.,Departments of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Elvira E Jimenez
- Behavioral Neurology Program, Department of Neurology, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Paul M Thompson
- Imaging Genetics Center, Mark & Mary Stevens Institute for Neuroimaging & Informatics, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey, CA, USA. .,Department of Neurology, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, USA. .,Departments of Neurology, Psychiatry, Radiology, Engineering, Pediatrics, and Ophthalmology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
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44
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Zhang J, Huang C, Ibrahim JG, Jha S, Knickmeyer RC, Gilmore JH, Styner M, Zhu H. HFPRM: Hierarchical Functional Principal Regression Model for Diffusion Tensor Image Bundle Statistics. INFORMATION PROCESSING IN MEDICAL IMAGING : PROCEEDINGS OF THE ... CONFERENCE 2017; 10265:478-489. [PMID: 28947871 DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-59050-9_38] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/07/2023]
Abstract
Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides a unique approach to understand the geometric structure of brain fiber bundles and to delineate the diffusion properties across subjects and time. It can be used to identify structural connectivity abnormalities and helps to diagnose brain-related disorders. The aim of this paper is to develop a novel, robust, and efficient dimensional reduction and regression framework, called hierarchical functional principal regression model (HFPRM), to effectively correlate high-dimensional fiber bundle statistics with a set of predictors of interest, such as age, diagnosis status, and genetic markers. The three key novelties of HFPRM include the simultaneous analysis of a large number of fiber bundles, the disentanglement of global and individual latent factors that characterizes between-tract correlation patterns, and a bi-level analysis on the predictor effects. Simulations are conducted to evaluate the finite sample performance of HFPRM. We have also applied HFPRM to a genome-wide association study to explore important genetic variants in neonatal white matter development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jingwen Zhang
- Department of Biostatistics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
| | - Chao Huang
- Department of Biostatistics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
| | - Joseph G Ibrahim
- Department of Biostatistics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
| | - Shaili Jha
- Curriculum in Neurobiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
| | | | - John H Gilmore
- Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
| | - Martin Styner
- Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
| | - Hongtu Zhu
- Department of Biostatistics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.,Department of Biostatistics, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, USA
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45
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Shi Y, Toga AW. Connectome imaging for mapping human brain pathways. Mol Psychiatry 2017; 22:1230-1240. [PMID: 28461700 PMCID: PMC5568931 DOI: 10.1038/mp.2017.92] [Citation(s) in RCA: 56] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/09/2016] [Revised: 02/06/2017] [Accepted: 02/24/2017] [Indexed: 01/23/2023]
Abstract
With the fast advance of connectome imaging techniques, we have the opportunity of mapping the human brain pathways in vivo at unprecedented resolution. In this article we review the current developments of diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for the reconstruction of anatomical pathways in connectome studies. We first introduce the background of diffusion MRI with an emphasis on the technical advances and challenges in state-of-the-art multi-shell acquisition schemes used in the Human Connectome Project. Characterization of the microstructural environment in the human brain is discussed from the tensor model to the general fiber orientation distribution (FOD) models that can resolve crossing fibers in each voxel of the image. Using FOD-based tractography, we describe novel methods for fiber bundle reconstruction and graph-based connectivity analysis. Building upon these novel developments, there have already been successful applications of connectome imaging techniques in reconstructing challenging brain pathways. Examples including retinofugal and brainstem pathways will be reviewed. Finally, we discuss future directions in connectome imaging and its interaction with other aspects of brain imaging research.
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Affiliation(s)
- Y Shi
- Laboratory of Neuro Imaging (LONI), USC Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - A W Toga
- Laboratory of Neuro Imaging (LONI), USC Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
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46
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Fiberprint: A subject fingerprint based on sparse code pooling for white matter fiber analysis. Neuroimage 2017; 158:242-259. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.06.083] [Citation(s) in RCA: 27] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/24/2016] [Revised: 06/20/2017] [Accepted: 06/30/2017] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
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47
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Pagnozzi AM, Dowson N, Doecke J, Fiori S, Bradley AP, Boyd RN, Rose S. Identifying relevant biomarkers of brain injury from structural MRI: Validation using automated approaches in children with unilateral cerebral palsy. PLoS One 2017; 12:e0181605. [PMID: 28763455 PMCID: PMC5538741 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0181605] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/25/2016] [Accepted: 05/02/2017] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Previous studies have proposed that the early elucidation of brain injury from structural Magnetic Resonance Images (sMRI) is critical for the clinical assessment of children with cerebral palsy (CP). Although distinct aetiologies, including cortical maldevelopments, white and grey matter lesions and ventricular enlargement, have been categorised, these injuries are commonly only assessed in a qualitative fashion. As a result, sMRI remains relatively underexploited for clinical assessments, despite its widespread use. In this study, several automated and validated techniques to automatically quantify these three classes of injury were generated in a large cohort of children (n = 139) aged 5–17, including 95 children diagnosed with unilateral CP. Using a feature selection approach on a training data set (n = 97) to find severity of injury biomarkers predictive of clinical function (motor, cognitive, communicative and visual function), cortical shape and regional lesion burden were most often chosen associated with clinical function. Validating the best models on the unseen test data (n = 42), correlation values ranged between 0.545 and 0.795 (p<0.008), indicating significant associations with clinical function. The measured prevalence of injury, including ventricular enlargement (70%), white and grey matter lesions (55%) and cortical malformations (30%), were similar to the prevalence observed in other cohorts of children with unilateral CP. These findings support the early characterisation of injury from sMRI into previously defined aetiologies as part of standard clinical assessment. Furthermore, the strong and significant association between quantifications of injury observed on structural MRI and multiple clinical scores accord with empirically established structure-function relationships.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alex M. Pagnozzi
- CSIRO Health and Biosecurity, The Australian e-Health Research Centre, Brisbane, Australia
- The School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
- * E-mail:
| | - Nicholas Dowson
- CSIRO Health and Biosecurity, The Australian e-Health Research Centre, Brisbane, Australia
| | - James Doecke
- CSIRO Health and Biosecurity, The Australian e-Health Research Centre, Brisbane, Australia
| | | | - Andrew P. Bradley
- The School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
| | - Roslyn N. Boyd
- Queensland Cerebral Palsy and Rehabilitation Research Centre, School of Medicine and Science, Centre for Children’s Health Research, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
| | - Stephen Rose
- CSIRO Health and Biosecurity, The Australian e-Health Research Centre, Brisbane, Australia
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48
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Garyfallidis E, Côté MA, Rheault F, Sidhu J, Hau J, Petit L, Fortin D, Cunanne S, Descoteaux M. Recognition of white matter bundles using local and global streamline-based registration and clustering. Neuroimage 2017; 170:283-295. [PMID: 28712994 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.07.015] [Citation(s) in RCA: 149] [Impact Index Per Article: 21.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/30/2016] [Revised: 06/06/2017] [Accepted: 07/10/2017] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Virtual dissection of diffusion MRI tractograms is cumbersome and needs extensive knowledge of white matter anatomy. This virtual dissection often requires several inclusion and exclusion regions-of-interest that make it a process that is very hard to reproduce across experts. Having automated tools that can extract white matter bundles for tract-based studies of large numbers of people is of great interest for neuroscience and neurosurgical planning. The purpose of our proposed method, named RecoBundles, is to segment white matter bundles and make virtual dissection easier to perform. This can help explore large tractograms from multiple persons directly in their native space. RecoBundles leverages latest state-of-the-art streamline-based registration and clustering to recognize and extract bundles using prior bundle models. RecoBundles uses bundle models as shape priors for detecting similar streamlines and bundles in tractograms. RecoBundles is 100% streamline-based, is efficient to work with millions of streamlines and, most importantly, is robust and adaptive to incomplete data and bundles with missing components. It is also robust to pathological brains with tumors and deformations. We evaluated our results using multiple bundles and showed that RecoBundles is in good agreement with the neuroanatomical experts and generally produced more dense bundles. Across all the different experiments reported in this paper, RecoBundles was able to identify the core parts of the bundles, independently from tractography type (deterministic or probabilistic) or size. Thus, RecoBundles can be a valuable method for exploring tractograms and facilitating tractometry studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Eleftherios Garyfallidis
- Department of Intelligent Systems Engineering, School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA.
| | - Marc-Alexandre Côté
- Sherbrooke Connectivity Imaging Lab (SCIL), Computer Science Department, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Canada
| | - Francois Rheault
- Sherbrooke Connectivity Imaging Lab (SCIL), Computer Science Department, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Canada
| | - Jasmeen Sidhu
- Sherbrooke Connectivity Imaging Lab (SCIL), Computer Science Department, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Canada
| | - Janice Hau
- Brain Development Imaging Lab (BDIL), Department of Psychology, San Diego State University, USA; Groupe d' Imagerie Neurofonctionnelle, Institut des Maladies Neurodégénératives, UMR5293, CNRS, CEA Université de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France
| | - Laurent Petit
- Groupe d' Imagerie Neurofonctionnelle, Institut des Maladies Neurodégénératives, UMR5293, CNRS, CEA Université de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France
| | - David Fortin
- Division of Neurosurgery and Neuro-Oncology, Faculty of Medicine and Health Science, University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada
| | - Stephen Cunanne
- Research Center on Aging and Faculté de Médecine et des Sciences de la Santé, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada
| | - Maxime Descoteaux
- Sherbrooke Connectivity Imaging Lab (SCIL), Computer Science Department, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Canada
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49
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Dennis EL, Rashid F, Faskowitz J, Jin Y, McMahon KL, de Zubicaray GI, Martin NG, Hickie IB, Wright MJ, Jahanshad N, Thompson PM. MAPPING AGE EFFECTS ALONG FIBER TRACTS IN YOUNG ADULTS. PROCEEDINGS. IEEE INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON BIOMEDICAL IMAGING 2017; 2017:101-104. [PMID: 29201279 DOI: 10.1109/isbi.2017.7950478] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/06/2022]
Abstract
Brain development is a protracted and dynamic process. Many studies have charted the trajectory of white matter development, but here we sought to map these effects in greater detail, based on a large set of fiber tracts automatically extracted from HARDI (high angular resolution diffusion imaging) at 4 tesla. We used autoMATE (automated multi-atlas tract extraction) to extract diffusivity measures along 18 of the brain's major fiber bundles in 667 young adults, aged 18-30. We examined linear and non-linear age effects on diffusivity measures, pointwise along tracts. All diffusivity measures showed both linear and non-linear age effects. Tracts with the most pronounced age effects were those that connected the temporal lobe to the rest of the brain. Nonlinear age effects were picked up strongly in the anterior corpus callosum and right temporo-parietal tracts.
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Affiliation(s)
- Emily L Dennis
- Imaging Genetics Center, USC Keck School of Medicine, Marina del Rey, CA, USA
- Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Faisal Rashid
- Imaging Genetics Center, USC Keck School of Medicine, Marina del Rey, CA, USA
| | - Josh Faskowitz
- Imaging Genetics Center, USC Keck School of Medicine, Marina del Rey, CA, USA
| | - Yan Jin
- Imaging Genetics Center, USC Keck School of Medicine, Marina del Rey, CA, USA
| | - Katie L McMahon
- Center for Advanced Imaging, Univ. of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
| | | | | | - Ian B Hickie
- Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney, Australia
| | - Margaret J Wright
- Center for Advanced Imaging, Univ. of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
- Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
| | - Neda Jahanshad
- Imaging Genetics Center, USC Keck School of Medicine, Marina del Rey, CA, USA
| | - Paul M Thompson
- Imaging Genetics Center, USC Keck School of Medicine, Marina del Rey, CA, USA
- Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
- Departments of Neurology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Radiology, Engineering, and Ophthalmology, USC, Los Angeles, CA
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50
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Multi-modal Registration Improves Group Discrimination in Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury. ACTA ACUST UNITED AC 2017. [PMID: 29147687 DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-55524-9_4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register]
Abstract
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can disrupt the white matter (WM) integrity in the brain, leading to functional and cognitive disruptions that may persist for years. There is considerable heterogeneity within the patient group, which complicates group analyses. Here we present improvements to a tract identification workflow, automated multi-atlas tract extraction (autoMATE), evaluating the effects of improved registration. Use of study-specific template improved group classification accuracy over the standard workflow. The addition of a multi-modal registration that includes information from diffusion weighted imaging (DWI), T1-weighted, and Fluid-Attenuated Inversion Recovery (FLAIR) further improved classification accuracy. We also examined whether particular tracts contribute more to group classification than others. Parts of the corpus callosum contributed most, and there were unexpected asymmetries between bilateral tracts.
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