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Raj A, Gass A, Eisele P, Dabringhaus A, Kraemer M, Zöllner FG. A generalizable deep voxel-guided morphometry algorithm for the detection of subtle lesion dynamics in multiple sclerosis. Front Neurosci 2024; 18:1326108. [PMID: 38332857 PMCID: PMC10850259 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2024.1326108] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/22/2023] [Accepted: 01/10/2024] [Indexed: 02/10/2024] Open
Abstract
Introduction Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic neurological disorder characterized by the progressive loss of myelin and axonal structures in the central nervous system. Accurate detection and monitoring of MS-related changes in brain structures are crucial for disease management and treatment evaluation. We propose a deep learning algorithm for creating Voxel-Guided Morphometry (VGM) maps from longitudinal MRI brain volumes for analyzing MS disease activity. Our approach focuses on developing a generalizable model that can effectively be applied to unseen datasets. Methods Longitudinal MS patient high-resolution 3D T1-weighted follow-up imaging from three different MRI systems were analyzed. We employed a 3D residual U-Net architecture with attention mechanisms. The U-Net serves as the backbone, enabling spatial feature extraction from MRI volumes. Attention mechanisms are integrated to enhance the model's ability to capture relevant information and highlight salient regions. Furthermore, we incorporate image normalization by histogram matching and resampling techniques to improve the networks' ability to generalize to unseen datasets from different MRI systems across imaging centers. This ensures robust performance across diverse data sources. Results Numerous experiments were conducted using a dataset of 71 longitudinal MRI brain volumes of MS patients. Our approach demonstrated a significant improvement of 4.3% in mean absolute error (MAE) against the state-of-the-art (SOTA) method. Furthermore, the algorithm's generalizability was evaluated on two unseen datasets (n = 116) with an average improvement of 4.2% in MAE over the SOTA approach. Discussion Results confirm that the proposed approach is fast and robust and has the potential for broader clinical applicability.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anish Raj
- Computer Assisted Clinical Medicine, Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Baden Württemberg, Germany
- Mannheim Institute for Intelligent Systems in Medicine, Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Baden Württemberg, Germany
| | - Achim Gass
- Department of Neurology, University Medical Centre Mannheim, Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Baden Württemberg, Germany
- Mannheim Center for Translational Neurosciences, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Baden Württemberg, Germany
| | - Philipp Eisele
- Department of Neurology, University Medical Centre Mannheim, Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Baden Württemberg, Germany
- Mannheim Center for Translational Neurosciences, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Baden Württemberg, Germany
| | | | - Matthias Kraemer
- VGMorph GmbH, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
- NeuroCentrum, Grevenbroich, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
| | - Frank G. Zöllner
- Computer Assisted Clinical Medicine, Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Baden Württemberg, Germany
- Mannheim Institute for Intelligent Systems in Medicine, Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Baden Württemberg, Germany
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Spagnolo F, Depeursinge A, Schädelin S, Akbulut A, Müller H, Barakovic M, Melie-Garcia L, Bach Cuadra M, Granziera C. How far MS lesion detection and segmentation are integrated into the clinical workflow? A systematic review. Neuroimage Clin 2023; 39:103491. [PMID: 37659189 PMCID: PMC10480555 DOI: 10.1016/j.nicl.2023.103491] [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: 08/02/2023] [Accepted: 08/04/2023] [Indexed: 09/04/2023]
Abstract
INTRODUCTION Over the past few years, the deep learning community has developed and validated a plethora of tools for lesion detection and segmentation in Multiple Sclerosis (MS). However, there is an important gap between validating models technically and clinically. To this end, a six-step framework necessary for the development, validation, and integration of quantitative tools in the clinic was recently proposed under the name of the Quantitative Neuroradiology Initiative (QNI). AIMS Investigate to what extent automatic tools in MS fulfill the QNI framework necessary to integrate automated detection and segmentation into the clinical neuroradiology workflow. METHODS Adopting the systematic Cochrane literature review methodology, we screened and summarised published scientific articles that perform automatic MS lesions detection and segmentation. We categorised the retrieved studies based on their degree of fulfillment of QNI's six-steps, which include a tool's technical assessment, clinical validation, and integration. RESULTS We found 156 studies; 146/156 (94%) fullfilled the first QNI step, 155/156 (99%) the second, 8/156 (5%) the third, 3/156 (2%) the fourth, 5/156 (3%) the fifth and only one the sixth. CONCLUSIONS To date, little has been done to evaluate the clinical performance and the integration in the clinical workflow of available methods for MS lesion detection/segmentation. In addition, the socio-economic effects and the impact on patients' management of such tools remain almost unexplored.
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Affiliation(s)
- Federico Spagnolo
- Translational Imaging in Neurology (ThINK) Basel, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Medicine, University Hospital Basel and University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland; Department of Neurology, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland; Research Center for Clinical Neuroimmunology and Neuroscience Basel (RC2NB), University Hospital Basel and University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland; MedGIFT, Institute of Informatics, School of Management, HES-SO Valais-Wallis University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, Sierre, Switzerland
| | - Adrien Depeursinge
- MedGIFT, Institute of Informatics, School of Management, HES-SO Valais-Wallis University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, Sierre, Switzerland; Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Department, Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
| | - Sabine Schädelin
- Translational Imaging in Neurology (ThINK) Basel, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Medicine, University Hospital Basel and University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland; Clinical Trial Unit, Department of Clinical Research, University Hospital Basel, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
| | - Aysenur Akbulut
- Translational Imaging in Neurology (ThINK) Basel, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Medicine, University Hospital Basel and University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland; Ankara University School of Medicine, Ankara, Turkey
| | - Henning Müller
- MedGIFT, Institute of Informatics, School of Management, HES-SO Valais-Wallis University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, Sierre, Switzerland; The Sense Research and Innovation Center, Lausanne and Sion, Switzerland
| | - Muhamed Barakovic
- Translational Imaging in Neurology (ThINK) Basel, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Medicine, University Hospital Basel and University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland; Department of Neurology, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland; Research Center for Clinical Neuroimmunology and Neuroscience Basel (RC2NB), University Hospital Basel and University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
| | - Lester Melie-Garcia
- Translational Imaging in Neurology (ThINK) Basel, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Medicine, University Hospital Basel and University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland; Department of Neurology, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland; Research Center for Clinical Neuroimmunology and Neuroscience Basel (RC2NB), University Hospital Basel and University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
| | - Meritxell Bach Cuadra
- CIBM Center for Biomedical Imaging, Lausanne, Switzerland; Radiology Department, Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
| | - Cristina Granziera
- Translational Imaging in Neurology (ThINK) Basel, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Medicine, University Hospital Basel and University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland; Department of Neurology, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland; Research Center for Clinical Neuroimmunology and Neuroscience Basel (RC2NB), University Hospital Basel and University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
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Sarica B, Seker DZ, Bayram B. A dense residual U-net for multiple sclerosis lesions segmentation from multi-sequence 3D MR images. Int J Med Inform 2023; 170:104965. [PMID: 36580821 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2022.104965] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/06/2022] [Accepted: 12/08/2022] [Indexed: 12/28/2022]
Abstract
Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease that causes brain and spinal cord lesions, which magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can detect and characterize. Recently, deep learning methods have achieved remarkable results in the automated segmentation of MS lesions from MRI data. Hence, this study proposes a novel dense residual U-Net model that combines attention gate (AG), efficient channel attention (ECA), and Atrous Spatial Pyramid Pooling (ASPP) to enhance the performance of the automatic MS lesion segmentation using 3D MRI sequences. First, convolution layers in each block of the U-Net architecture are replaced by residual blocks and connected densely. Then, AGs are exploited to capture salient features passed through the skip connections. The ECA module is appended at the end of each residual block and each downsampling block of U-Net. Later, the bottleneck of U-Net is replaced with the ASSP module to extract multi-scale contextual information. Furthermore, 3D MR images of Fluid Attenuated Inversion Recovery (FLAIR), T1-weighted (T1-w), and T2-weighted (T2-w) are exploited jointly to perform better MS lesion segmentation. The proposed model is validated on the publicly available ISBI2015 and MSSEG2016 challenge datasets. This model produced an ISBI score of 92.75, a mean Dice score of 66.88%, a mean positive predictive value (PPV) of 86.50%, and a mean lesion-wise true positive rate (LTPR) of 60.64% on the ISBI2015 testing set. Also, it achieved a mean Dice score of 67.27%, a mean PPV of 65.19%, and a mean sensitivity of 74.40% on the MSSEG2016 testing set. The results show that the proposed model performs better than the results of some experts and some of the other state-of-the-art methods realized related to this particular subject. Specifically, the best Dice score and the best LTPR are obtained on the ISBI2015 testing set by using the proposed model to segment MS lesions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Beytullah Sarica
- Istanbul Technical University, Graduate School, Department of Applied Informatics, Istanbul, 34469, Turkey.
| | - Dursun Zafer Seker
- Istanbul Technical University, Civil Engineering Faculty, Department of Geomatics Engineering, Istanbul, 34469, Turkey.
| | - Bulent Bayram
- Yildiz Technical University, Civil Engineering Faculty, Department of Geomatics Engineering, Istanbul, 34220, Turkey.
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