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Cho KIK, Zhang F, Penzel N, Seitz-Holland J, Tang Y, Zhang T, Xu L, Li H, Keshavan M, Whitfield-Gabrieli S, Niznikiewicz M, Stone WS, Wang J, Shenton ME, Pasternak O. Excessive interstitial free-water in cortical gray matter preceding accelerated volume changes in individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis. Mol Psychiatry 2024:10.1038/s41380-024-02597-3. [PMID: 38830974 DOI: 10.1038/s41380-024-02597-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/17/2023] [Revised: 05/01/2024] [Accepted: 05/03/2024] [Indexed: 06/05/2024]
Abstract
Recent studies show that accelerated cortical gray matter (GM) volume reduction seen in anatomical MRI can help distinguish between individuals at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis who will develop psychosis and those who will not. This reduction is suggested to represent atypical developmental or degenerative changes accompanying an accumulation of microstructural changes, such as decreased spine density and dendritic arborization. Detecting the microstructural sources of these changes before they accumulate into volume loss is crucial. Our study aimed to detect these microstructural GM alterations using diffusion MRI (dMRI). We tested for baseline and longitudinal group differences in anatomical and dMRI data from 160 individuals at CHR and 96 healthy controls (HC) acquired in a single imaging site. Of the CHR individuals, 33 developed psychosis (CHR-P), while 127 did not (CHR-NP). Among all participants, longitudinal data was available for 45 HCs, 17 CHR-P, and 66 CHR-NP. Eight cortical lobes were examined for GM volume and GM microstructure. A novel dMRI measure, interstitial free water (iFW), was used to quantify GM microstructure by eliminating cerebrospinal fluid contribution. Additionally, we assessed whether these measures differentiated the CHR-P from the CHR-NP. In addition, for completeness, we also investigated changes in cortical thickness and in white matter (WM) microstructure. At baseline the CHR group had significantly higher iFW than HC in the prefrontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes, while volume was reduced only in the temporal lobe. Neither iFW nor volume differentiated between the CHR-P and CHR-NP groups at baseline. However, in many brain areas, the CHR-P group demonstrated significantly accelerated changes (iFW increase and volume reduction) with time than the CHR-NP group. Cortical thickness provided similar results as volume, and there were no significant changes in WM microstructure. Our results demonstrate that microstructural GM changes in individuals at CHR have a wider extent than volumetric changes or microstructural WM changes, and they predate the acceleration of brain changes that occur around psychosis onset. Microstructural GM changes, as reflected by the increased iFW, are thus an early pathology at the prodromal stage of psychosis that may be useful for a better mechanistic understanding of psychosis development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kang Ik K Cho
- Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Fan Zhang
- Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Nora Penzel
- Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Johanna Seitz-Holland
- Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Yingying Tang
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Psychotic Disorders, Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China
- Brain Science and Technology Research Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
| | - Tianhong Zhang
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Psychotic Disorders, Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China
| | - Lihua Xu
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Psychotic Disorders, Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China
- Brain Science and Technology Research Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
| | - Huijun Li
- Department of Psychology, Florida A&M University, Tallahassee, FL, USA
| | - Matcheri Keshavan
- The Massachusetts Mental Health Center, Public Psychiatry Division, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli
- Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA
- The McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the Poitras Center for Affective Disorders Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Margaret Niznikiewicz
- The Department of Psychiatry, Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System, Brockton Division, Brockton, MA, USA
| | - William S Stone
- The Massachusetts Mental Health Center, Public Psychiatry Division, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Jijun Wang
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Psychotic Disorders, Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.
- Brain Science and Technology Research Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
| | - Martha E Shenton
- Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Ofer Pasternak
- Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
- Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
- Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
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Ahmadi K, Pereira JB, van Westen D, Pasternak O, Zhang F, Nilsson M, Stomrud E, Spotorno N, Hansson O. Fixel-Based Analysis Reveals Tau-Related White Matter Changes in Early Stages of Alzheimer's Disease. J Neurosci 2024; 44:e0538232024. [PMID: 38565289 PMCID: PMC11063818 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.0538-23.2024] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/24/2023] [Revised: 03/07/2024] [Accepted: 03/08/2024] [Indexed: 04/04/2024] Open
Abstract
Several studies have shown white matter (WM) abnormalities in Alzheimer's disease (AD) using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Nonetheless, robust characterization of WM changes has been challenging due to the methodological limitations of DTI. We applied fixel-based analyses (FBA) to examine microscopic differences in fiber density (FD) and macroscopic changes in fiber cross-section (FC) in early stages of AD (N = 393, 212 females). FBA was also compared with DTI, free-water corrected (FW)-DTI and diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI). We further investigated the correlation of FBA and tensor-derived metrics with AD pathology and cognition. FBA metrics were decreased in the entire cingulum bundle, uncinate fasciculus and anterior thalamic radiations in Aβ-positive patients with mild cognitive impairment compared to control groups. Metrics derived from DKI, and FW-DTI showed similar alterations whereas WM degeneration detected by DTI was more widespread. Tau-PET uptake in medial temporal regions was only correlated with reduced FC mainly in the parahippocampal cingulum in Aβ-positive individuals. This tau-related WM alteration was also associated with impaired memory. Despite the spatially extensive between-group differences in DTI-metrics, the link between WM and tau aggregation was only revealed using FBA metrics implying high sensitivity but low specificity of DTI-based measures in identifying subtle tau-related WM degeneration. No relationship was found between amyloid load and any diffusion-MRI measures. Our results indicate that early tau-related WM alterations in AD are due to macrostructural changes specifically captured by FBA metrics. Thus, future studies assessing the effects of AD pathology in WM tracts should consider using FBA metrics.
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Affiliation(s)
- Khazar Ahmadi
- Clinical Memory Research Unit, Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund University, Lund 22362, Sweden
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum 44801, Germany
| | - Joana B Pereira
- Clinical Memory Research Unit, Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund University, Lund 22362, Sweden
- Division of Neuro, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm 17176, Sweden
| | - Danielle van Westen
- Clinical Memory Research Unit, Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund University, Lund 22362, Sweden
- Diagnostic Radiology, Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund University, Lund 22185, Sweden
| | - Ofer Pasternak
- Departments of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115
- Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115
- Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02114
| | - Fan Zhang
- Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115
| | - Markus Nilsson
- Diagnostic Radiology, Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund University, Lund 22185, Sweden
- Department of Medical Radiation Physics, Lund University, Lund 22185, Sweden
| | - Erik Stomrud
- Clinical Memory Research Unit, Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund University, Lund 22362, Sweden
- Memory Clinic, Skåne University Hospital, Malmö 21428, Sweden
| | - Nicola Spotorno
- Clinical Memory Research Unit, Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund University, Lund 22362, Sweden
| | - Oskar Hansson
- Clinical Memory Research Unit, Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund University, Lund 22362, Sweden
- Memory Clinic, Skåne University Hospital, Malmö 21428, Sweden
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Zhang F, Cho KIK, Seitz-Holland J, Ning L, Legarreta JH, Rathi Y, Westin CF, O'Donnell LJ, Pasternak O. DDParcel: Deep Learning Anatomical Brain Parcellation From Diffusion MRI. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL IMAGING 2024; 43:1191-1202. [PMID: 37943635 PMCID: PMC10994696 DOI: 10.1109/tmi.2023.3331691] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/12/2023]
Abstract
Parcellation of anatomically segregated cortical and subcortical brain regions is required in diffusion MRI (dMRI) analysis for region-specific quantification and better anatomical specificity of tractography. Most current dMRI parcellation approaches compute the parcellation from anatomical MRI (T1- or T2-weighted) data, using tools such as FreeSurfer or CAT12, and then register it to the diffusion space. However, the registration is challenging due to image distortions and low resolution of dMRI data, often resulting in mislabeling in the derived brain parcellation. Furthermore, these approaches are not applicable when anatomical MRI data is unavailable. As an alternative we developed the Deep Diffusion Parcellation (DDParcel), a deep learning method for fast and accurate parcellation of brain anatomical regions directly from dMRI data. The input to DDParcel are dMRI parameter maps and the output are labels for 101 anatomical regions corresponding to the FreeSurfer Desikan-Killiany (DK) parcellation. A multi-level fusion network leverages complementary information in the different input maps, at three network levels: input, intermediate layer, and output. DDParcel learns the registration of diffusion features to anatomical MRI from the high-quality Human Connectome Project data. Then, to predict brain parcellation for a new subject, the DDParcel network no longer requires anatomical MRI data but only the dMRI data. Comparing DDParcel's parcellation with T1w-based parcellation shows higher test-retest reproducibility and a higher regional homogeneity, while requiring much less computational time. Generalizability is demonstrated on a range of populations and dMRI acquisition protocols. Utility of DDParcel's parcellation is demonstrated on tractography analysis for fiber tract identification.
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Kumar PR, Jha RK, Katti A. Brain tissue segmentation in neurosurgery: a systematic analysis for quantitative tractography approaches. Acta Neurol Belg 2024; 124:1-15. [PMID: 36609837 DOI: 10.1007/s13760-023-02170-9] [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: 07/14/2022] [Accepted: 12/31/2022] [Indexed: 01/09/2023]
Abstract
Diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) is a cutting-edge imaging method that provides a macro-scale in vivo map of the white matter pathways in the brain. The measurement of brain microstructure and the enhancement of tractography rely heavily on dMRI tissue segmentation. Anatomical MRI technique (e.g., T1- and T2-weighted imaging) is the most widely used method for segmentation in dMRI. In comparison to anatomical MRI, dMRI suffers from higher image distortions, lower image quality, and making inter-modality registration more difficult. The dMRI tractography study of brain connectivity has become a major part of the neuroimaging landscape in recent years. In this research, we provide a high-level overview of the methods used to segment several brain tissues types, including grey and white matter and cerebrospinal fluid, to enable quantitative studies of structural connectivity in the brain in health and illness. In the first part of our review, we discuss the three main phases in the quantitative analysis of tractography, which are correction, segmentation, and quantification. Methodological possibilities are described for each phase, along with their popularity and potential benefits and drawbacks. After that, we will look at research that used quantitative tractography approaches to examine the white and grey matter of the brain, with an emphasis on neurodevelopment, ageing, neurological illnesses, mental disorders, and neurosurgery as possible applications. Even though there have been substantial advancements in methodological technology and the spectrum of applications, there is still no consensus regarding the "optimal" approach in the quantitative analysis of tractography. As a result, researchers should tread carefully when interpreting the findings of quantitative analysis of tractography.
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Affiliation(s)
- Puranam Revanth Kumar
- Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IcfaiTech (Faculty of Science and Technology), IFHE University, Hyderabad, 501203, India.
| | - Rajesh Kumar Jha
- Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IcfaiTech (Faculty of Science and Technology), IFHE University, Hyderabad, 501203, India
| | - Amogh Katti
- Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Gitam School of Technology, GITAM University, Hyderabad, 502329, India
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5
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Kang IC, Pasternak O, Zhang F, Penzel N, Seitz-Holland J, Tang Y, Zhang T, Xu L, Li H, Keshavan M, Whitfield-Gabrielli S, Niznikiewicz M, Stone W, Wang J, Shenton M. Microstructural Cortical Gray Matter Changes Preceding Accelerated Volume Changes in Individuals at Clinical High Risk for Psychosis. RESEARCH SQUARE 2023:rs.3.rs-3179575. [PMID: 37841868 PMCID: PMC10571628 DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-3179575/v1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/17/2023]
Abstract
Recent studies show that accelerated cortical gray matter (GM) volume reduction seen in anatomical MRI can help distinguish between individuals at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis who will develop psychosis and those who will not. This reduction is thought to result from an accumulation of microstructural changes, such as decreased spine density and dendritic arborization. Detecting the microstructural sources of these changes before they accumulate is crucial, as volume reduction likely indicates an underlying neurodegenerative process. Our study aimed to detect these microstructural GM alterations using diffusion MRI (dMRI). We tested for baseline and longitudinal group differences in anatomical and dMRI data from 160 individuals at CHR and 96 healthy controls (HC) acquired in a single imaging site. Eight cortical lobes were examined for GM volume and GM microstructure. A novel dMRI measure, interstitial free water (iFW), was used to quantify GM microstructure by eliminating cerebrospinal fluid contribution. Additionally, we assessed whether these measures differentiated the 33 individuals at CHR who developed psychosis (CHR-P) from the 127 individuals at CHR who did not (CHR-NP). At baseline the CHR group had significantly higher iFW than HC in the prefrontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes, while volume was reduced only in the temporal lobe. Neither iFW nor volume differentiated between the CHR-P and CHR-NP groups at baseline. However, in most brain areas, the CHR-P group demonstrated significantly accelerated iFW increase and volume reduction with time than the CHR-NP group. Our results demonstrate that microstructural GM changes in individuals at CHR have a wider extent than volumetric changes and they predate the acceleration of brain changes that occur around psychosis onset. Microstructural GM changes are thus an early pathology at the prodromal stage of psychosis that may be useful for early detection and a better mechanistic understanding of psychosis development.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | | | | | - Johanna Seitz-Holland
- Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School
| | - Yingying Tang
- Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine
| | - Tianhong Zhang
- Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Psychotic Disorders, Shanghai 200030, PR China
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | - Jijun Wang
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Psychotic Disorders, Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine
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Guo L, Lyu J, Zhang Z, Shi J, Feng Q, Feng Y, Gao M, Zhang X. A Joint Framework for Denoising and Estimating Diffusion Kurtosis Tensors Using Multiple Prior Information. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL IMAGING 2022; 41:308-319. [PMID: 34520348 DOI: 10.1109/tmi.2021.3112515] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
Diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) has been shown to be valuable in a wide range of neuroscientific and clinical applications. However, reliable estimation of DKI tensors is often compromised by noise, especially for the kurtosis tensor (KT). Here, we propose a joint denoising and estimating framework that integrates multiple sources of prior information, including nonlocal structural self-similarity (NSS), local spatial smoothness (LSS), physical relevance (PR) of the DKI model, and noise characteristics of magnitude diffusion MRI (dMRI) images for improved estimation of DKI tensors. The local and nonlocal spatial smoothing constraints are complementary to each other, making the proposed framework highly effective in reducing the noise fluctuations on DKI tensors, especially KT. As an additional refinement, we propose to impose a physically relevant constraint within our joint denoising and estimation framework. We further adopt the first-moment noise-corrected fitting model (M1NCM) to remove the noncentral χ -distribution noise bias. The effectiveness of integrating multiple sources of priors into the joint framework is verified by comparing the proposed M1NCM-NSS-LSS-PR method with various versions of M1NCM-based estimators and two state-of-the-art methods. Results show that the proposed method outperformed the compared methods in simulations and in-vivo dMRI datasets of both spatially stationary and nonstationary noise distributions. The in-vivo experiments also show that the proposed M1NCM-NSS-LSS-PR method was robust to the number of diffusion directions.
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Zhang F, Breger A, Cho KIK, Ning L, Westin CF, O'Donnell LJ, Pasternak O. Deep learning based segmentation of brain tissue from diffusion MRI. Neuroimage 2021; 233:117934. [PMID: 33737246 PMCID: PMC8139182 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.117934] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/30/2020] [Revised: 12/12/2020] [Accepted: 03/01/2021] [Indexed: 02/06/2023] Open
Abstract
Segmentation of brain tissue types from diffusion MRI (dMRI) is an important task, required for quantification of brain microstructure and for improving tractography. Current dMRI segmentation is mostly based on anatomical MRI (e.g., T1- and T2-weighted) segmentation that is registered to the dMRI space. However, such inter-modality registration is challenging due to more image distortions and lower image resolution in dMRI as compared with anatomical MRI. In this study, we present a deep learning method for diffusion MRI segmentation, which we refer to as DDSeg. Our proposed method learns tissue segmentation from high-quality imaging data from the Human Connectome Project (HCP), where registration of anatomical MRI to dMRI is more precise. The method is then able to predict a tissue segmentation directly from new dMRI data, including data collected with different acquisition protocols, without requiring anatomical data and inter-modality registration. We train a convolutional neural network (CNN) to learn a tissue segmentation model using a novel augmented target loss function designed to improve accuracy in regions of tissue boundary. To further improve accuracy, our method adds diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) parameters that characterize non-Gaussian water molecule diffusion to the conventional diffusion tensor imaging parameters. The DKI parameters are calculated from the recently proposed mean-kurtosis-curve method that corrects implausible DKI parameter values and provides additional features that discriminate between tissue types. We demonstrate high tissue segmentation accuracy on HCP data, and also when applying the HCP-trained model on dMRI data from other acquisitions with lower resolution and fewer gradient directions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fan Zhang
- Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Anna Breger
- Faculty of Mathematics, University of Vienna, Wien, Austria
| | - Kang Ik Kevin Cho
- Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Lipeng Ning
- Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Carl-Fredrik Westin
- Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Lauren J O'Donnell
- Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Ofer Pasternak
- Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
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