Role of standardized and study‐specific human brain diffusion tensor templates in inter‐subject spatial normalization

Zhang, Shengwei; Arfanakis, Konstantinos

doi:10.1002/jmri.23842

Cited by 21 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…The results in this study show a slight improvement in reliability when using a study-specific template; however, in three methods and two regions, age modeling slightly improved with the standard template. This perhaps supports previous findings that a high quality standard template combined with low-artifact data can provide comparable results to a study-specific template [40], unless a disease group is being studied [41]. However, we also found that the standard template was much sharper than the study template, so the consequent differences in white matter masks may have also been a factor.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

“…The IIT DTI template version 4.1 [46] [47] was used for this purpose due to its high quality and use in related evaluation studies [40]. The imaging data was downloaded from the publicly available distribution on NITRC [48].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There has also been extensive testing of skeleton-based analysis to understand its strengths and limitations [28] [26] [37] as well as comparing to voxel-based analysis and region-based analysis [20] [21]. Previous work has also evaluated the choice of template type, showing the advantages of study-specific and high-quality templates [38] [39] [40] [41]. This paper builds on these prior findings by expanding the range of methods simultaneously compared in evaluation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Comparative evaluation of voxel-based spatial mapping in diffusion tensor imaging

2017

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This paper presents a comparative evaluation of methods for automated voxel-based spatial mapping in diffusion tensor imaging studies. Such methods are an essential step in computational pipelines and provide anatomically comparable measurements across a population in atlas-based studies. To better understand their strengths and weaknesses, we tested a total of eight methods for voxel-based spatial mapping in two types of diffusion tensor templates. The methods were evaluated with respect to scan-rescan reliability and an application to normal aging. The methods included voxel-based analysis with and without smoothing, two types of region-based analysis, and combinations thereof with skeletonization. The templates included a study-specific template created with DTI-TK and the IIT template serving as a standard template. To control for other factors in the pipeline, the experiments used a common dataset, acquired at 1.5T with a single shell high angular resolution diffusion MR imaging protocol, and tensor-based spatial normalization with DTI-TK. Scan-rescan reliability was assessed using the coefficient of variation (CV) and intraclass correlation (ICC) in eight subjects with three scans each. Sensitivity to normal aging was assessed in a population of 80 subjects aged 25 to 65 years old, and methods were compared with respect to the anatomical agreement of significant findings and the R2 of the associated models of fractional anisotropy. The results show that reliability depended greatly on the method used for spatial mapping. The largest differences in reliability were found when adding smoothing and comparing voxel-based and region-based analyses. Skeletonization and template type were found to have either a small or negligible effect on reliability. The aging results showed agreement among the methods in nine brain areas, with some methods showing more sensitivity than others. Skeletonization and smoothing were not major factors affecting sensitivity to aging, but the standard template showed higher R2 in several conditions. A structural comparison of the templates showed that large deformations between them may be related to observed differences in patterns of significant voxels. Most areas showed significantly higher R2 with voxel-based analysis, particularly when clusters were smaller than the available regions-of-interest. Looking forward, these results can potentially help to interpret results from existing white matter imaging studies, as well as provide a resource to help in planning future studies to maximize reliability and sensitivity with regard to the scientific goals at hand.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Comparative evaluation of voxel-based spatial mapping in diffusion tensor imaging

2017

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“…The multi-subjects spatial alignment was performed based on the voxel-wise maps of FA values (Jahanshad et al, 2013). Advanced, diffusion tensor-based spatial registration techniques have been advocated as an alternative approach to register DTI data (Wang et al, 2011)(Zhang and Arfanakis, 2013). Tensor-based alignment techniques such as those implemented in (http://dti-tk.sourceforge.net) use the similarity in voxel-wise diffusion tensors to drive multi-subject alignment.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heritability of fractional anisotropy in human white matter: A comparison of Human Connectome Project and ENIGMA-DTI data

Kochunov¹,

et al. 2015

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The degree to which genetic factors influence brain connectivity is beginning to be understood. Large-scale efforts are underway to map the profile of genetic effects in various brain regions. The NIH-funded Human Connectome Project (HCP) is providing data valuable for analyzing the degree of genetic influence underlying brain connectivity revealed by state-of-the-art neuroimaging methods. We calculated the heritability of the fractional anisotropy (FA) measure derived from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) reconstruction in 481 HCP subjects (194/287 M/F) consisting of 57/60 pairs of mono- and dizygotic twins, and 246 siblings. FA measurements were derived using (Enhancing NeuroImaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis) ENIGMA DTI protocols and heritability estimates were calculated using the SOLAR-Eclipse imaging genetic analysis package. We compared heritability estimates derived from HCP data to those publicly available through the ENIGMA-DTI consortium, which were pooled together from five-family based studies across the US, Europe, and Australia. FA measurements from the HCP cohort for eleven major white matter tracts were highly heritable (h2=0.53–0.90, p<10−5), and were significantly correlated with the joint-analytical estimates from the ENIGMA cohort on the tract and voxel-wise levels. The similarity in regional heritability suggests that the additive genetic contribution to white matter microstructure is consistent across populations and imaging acquisition parameters. It also suggests the overarching genetic influence provides an opportunity to define a common genetic search space for future gene-discovery studies. Uniquely, the measurements of additive genetic contribution performed in this study can be repeated using online genetic analysis tools provided by the HCP ConnectomeDB web application.

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“…A study‐specific template (SST) was built from 20 randomly selected subjects as it was previously shown that the use of a SST instead of already existing templates (e.g., N27 or MNI) improves the accuracy of the registration before the computation of the voxel‐wise atlases. The Advanced Normalization Tools (ANTs) was used for this task as it provides an adapted feature set for atlas creation.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantitative brain relaxation atlases for personalized detection and characterization of brain pathology

Piredda

Hilbert

Granziera

et al. 2019

Magnetic Resonance in Med

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Purpose To exploit the improved comparability and hardware independency of quantitative MRI, databases of MR physical parameters in healthy tissue are required, to which tissue properties of patients can be compared. In this work, normative values for longitudinal and transverse relaxation times in the brain were established and tested in single‐subject comparisons for detection of abnormal relaxation times. Methods Relaxometry maps of the brain were acquired from 52 healthy volunteers. After spatially normalizing the volumes into a common space, T1 and T2 inter‐subject variability within the healthy cohort was modeled voxel‐wise. A method for a single‐subject comparison against the atlases was developed by computing z‐scores with respect to the established healthy norms. The comparison was applied to two multiple sclerosis and one clinically isolated syndrome cases for a proof of concept. Results The established atlases exhibit a low variation in white matter structures (median RMSE of models equal to 32 ms for T1 and 4 ms for T2), indicating that relaxation times are in a narrow range for normal tissues. The proposed method for single‐subject comparison detected relaxation time deviations from healthy norms in the example patient data sets. Relaxation times were found to be increased in brain lesions (mean z‐scores >5). Moreover, subtle and confluent differences (z‐scores ~2–4) were observed in clinically plausible regions (between lesions, corpus callosum). Conclusions Brain T1 and T2 quantitative norms were derived voxel‐wise with low variability in healthy tissue. Example patient deviation maps demonstrated good sensitivity of the atlases for detecting relaxation time alterations.

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Role of standardized and study‐specific human brain diffusion tensor templates in inter‐subject spatial normalization

Cited by 21 publications

References 39 publications

A Comparative evaluation of voxel-based spatial mapping in diffusion tensor imaging

A Comparative evaluation of voxel-based spatial mapping in diffusion tensor imaging

Heritability of fractional anisotropy in human white matter: A comparison of Human Connectome Project and ENIGMA-DTI data

Quantitative brain relaxation atlases for personalized detection and characterization of brain pathology

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