Individual Variability in the Structural Connectivity Architecture of the Human Brain.

The human brain exhibits high degree of individual variability in both its structure and function, which underlies inter-subject differences in cognition and behavior. It was previously shown that functional connectivity is more variable in the hetero-modal association cortex but less variable in the unimodal cortices. Structural connectivity is the anatomical substrate of functional connectivity, but the spatial and temporal patterns of individual variability in structural connectivity (IVSC) remain largely unknown.

Exploring the prognostic value and biological pathways of transcriptomics and radiomics patterns in glioblastoma multiforme.

Objectives: To develop a multi-omics prognostic model integrating transcriptomics and radiomics for predicting overall survival in patients with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), and investigate the biological pathways of radiomics patterns.

Materials And Methods: Transcription profiles of GBM patients and normal controls were used to obtain differentially expressed mRNAs and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs). Radiomics features were extracted from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Disrupted cerebellar structural connectome in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 and its association with transcriptional profiles.

Spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (SCA3) is primarily characterized by progressive cerebellar degeneration, including gray matter atrophy and disrupted anatomical and functional connectivity. The alterations of cerebellar white matter structural network in SCA3 and the underlying neurobiological mechanism remain unknown. Using a cohort of 20 patients with SCA3 and 20 healthy controls, we constructed cerebellar structural networks from diffusion MRI and investigated alterations of topological organization.

Decreased brain iron deposition based on quantitative susceptibility mapping correlates with reduced neurodevelopmental status in children with autism spectrum disorder.

To investigate potential correlations between the susceptibility values of certain brain regions and the severity of disease or neurodevelopmental status in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), 18 ASD children and 15 healthy controls (HCs) were recruited. The neurodevelopmental status was assessed by the Gesell Developmental Schedules (GDS) and the severity of the disease was evaluated by the Autism Behavior Checklist (ABC). Eleven brain regions were selected as regions of interest and the susceptibility values were measured by quantitative susceptibility mapping.

White matter structural changes before and after microvascular decompression for hemifacial spasm.

Hemifacial spasm (HFS) is a syndrome characterized by involuntary contractions of the facial muscles innervated by the ipsilateral facial nerve. Currently, microvascular decompression (MVD) is an effective treatment for HFS. Diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) is a non-invasive advanced magnetic resonance technique that allows us to reconstruct white matter (WM) virtually based on water diffusion direction.

Associations of quantitative susceptibility mapping with cortical atrophy and brain connectome in Alzheimer's disease: A multi-parametric study.

Aberrant susceptibility due to iron level abnormality and brain network disconnections are observed in Alzheimer's disease (AD), with disrupted iron homeostasis hypothesized to be linked to AD pathology and neuronal loss. However, whether associations exist between abnormal quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM), brain atrophy, and altered brain connectome in AD remains unclear. Based on multi-parametric brain imaging data from 30 AD patients and 26 healthy controls enrolled at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital, we investigated the abnormality of the QSM signal and volumetric measure across 246 brain regions in AD patients.

Immune-related lncRNAs signature and radiomics signature predict the prognosis and immune microenvironment of glioblastoma multiforme.

Background: Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most common primary malignant brain tumor in adults. This study aimed to construct immune-related long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) signature and radiomics signature to probe the prognosis and immune infiltration of GBM patients.

Methods: We downloaded GBM RNA-seq data and clinical information from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project database, and MRI data were obtained from The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA).

USBDAN: Unsupervised Scale-aware and Boundary-aware Domain Adaptive Network for Gastric Tumor Segmentation.

Accurate segmentation of gastric tumors from computed tomography (CT) images provides useful image information for guiding the diagnosis and treatment of gastric cancer. Researchers typically collect datasets from multiple medical centers to increase sample size and representation, but this raises the issue of data heterogeneity. To this end, we propose a new cross-center 3D tumor segmentation method named unsupervised scale-aware and boundary-aware domain adaptive network (USBDAN), which includes a new 3D neural network that efficiently bridges an Anisotropic neural network and a Transformer (AsTr) for extracting multi-scale features from the CT images with anisotropic resolution, and a scale-aware and boundary-aware domain alignment (SaBaDA) module for adaptively aligning multi-scale features between two domains and enhancing tumor boundary drawing based on location-related information drawn from each sample across all domains.

Evaluation of whole-brain oxygen metabolism in Alzheimer's disease using QSM and quantitative BOLD.

Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate the whole-brain pattern of oxygen extraction fraction (OEF), cerebral blood flow (CBF), and cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen consumption (CMRO) perturbation in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and investigate the relationship between regional cerebral oxygen metabolism and global cognition.

Methods: Twenty-six AD patients and 25 age-matched healthy controls (HC) were prospectively recruited in this study. Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) was used to evaluate cognitive status.

Investigation of functional connectivity in Bell's palsy using functional magnetic resonance imaging: prospective cross-sectional study.

Background: The most common cause of lower motor neuron facial palsy is Bell's palsy (BP). BP results in partial or complete inability to automatically move the facial muscles on the affected side and, in some cases, to close the eyelids, which can cause permanent eye damage. This study investigated changes in brain function and connectivity abnormalities in patients with BP.

Altered coupling of resting-state cerebral blood flow and functional connectivity in Meige syndrome.

Introduction: Meige syndrome (MS) is an adult-onset segmental dystonia disease, mainly manifested as blepharospasm and involuntary movement caused by dystonic dysfunction of the oromandibular muscles. The changes of brain activity, perfusion and neurovascular coupling in patients with Meige syndrome are hitherto unknown.

Methods: Twenty-five MS patients and thirty age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HC) were prospectively recruited in this study.

Regional age-related changes of neuromelanin and iron in the substantia nigra based on neuromelanin accumulation and iron deposition.

Objectives: To investigate age-related neuromelanin signal variation and iron content changes in the subregions of substantia nigra (SN) using magnetization transfer contrast neuromelanin-sensitive multi-echo fast field echo sequence in a normal population.

Methods: In this prospective study, 115 healthy volunteers between 20 and 86 years of age were recruited and scanned using 3.0-T MRI.

Liquid metal injected from interstitial channels for inhibiting subcutaneous hepatoma growth and improving MRI/MAT image contrast.

Objective: Liquid metal (LM) nowadays is considered a new biomedical material for medical treatment. The most common application of LM in medical therapy is taking LM as a carrier for oncology therapeutics. However, the feasibility and direct effect of LM in tumor treatment are still unknown, and how to delineate the negative resection margin (NRM) of the tumor is also a crucial problem in surgery.

Application of pseudocontinuous arterial spin labeling perfusion imaging in children with autism spectrum disorders.

Introduction: Pseudocontinuous Arterial Spin Labeling (pCASL) perfusion imaging allows non-invasive quantification of regional cerebral blood flow (CBF) as part of a multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) protocol. This study aimed to compare regional CBF in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) individuals with their age-matched typically developing (TD) children using pCASL perfusion imaging.

Materials And Methods: This cross-sectional study enrolled 17 individuals with ASD and 13 TD children.

Associations of cortical iron accumulation with cognition and cerebral atrophy in Alzheimer's disease.

Background: In Alzheimer's disease (AD), cerebral iron accumulation colocalizes with the pathological proteins amyloid-β (Aβ) and tau. Furthermore, tau-induced cortical thinning is associated with cognitive decline. In this study, quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) was used to investigate the whole-brain distribution pattern of cortical iron deposition and its relationships with cognition and cortical thickness in AD.

Unsupervised domain selective graph convolutional network for preoperative prediction of lymph node metastasis in gastric cancer.

Preoperative prediction of lymph node (LN) metastasis based on computed tomography (CT) scans is an important task in gastric cancer, but few machine learning-based techniques have been proposed. While multi-center datasets increase sample size and representation ability, they suffer from inter-center heterogeneity. To tackle the above issue, we propose a novel multi-source domain adaptation framework for this diagnosis task, which not only considers domain-invariant and domain-specific features, but also achieves the imbalanced knowledge transfer and class-aware feature alignment across domains.

Cerebral Blood Flow Pattern Changes in Unilateral Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss.

Objective: This study analyzed the differences in the cerebral blood flow (CBF) between unilateral Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss (SSNHL) patients and healthy controls (HCs). We also investigated CBF differences in auditory-related areas in patients with left- and right-sided SSNHL (lSSNHL and rSSNHL) and HCs. We further explore the correlation between unilateral SSNHL characteristics and changes in the CBF.

Evaluation of MRI Features and Neurodevelopmental Outcomes for Prenatally Diagnosed Periventricular Pseudocysts.

This study aimed to evaluate the morphologic features and neurodevelopmental outcomes of individuals prenatally diagnosed with a periventricular pseudocyst (PVPC). Pregnant women with a fetus prenatally diagnosed with PVPC by MRI were enrolled in this retrospective study. The fetuses with PVPCs were divided into group 1 (isolated PVPC) and group 2 (PVPC with additional findings).

Altered Cortical-Striatal Network in Patients With Hemifacial Spasm.

Hemifacial spasm (HFS) is a kind of motor disorder, and the striatum plays a significant role in motor function. The purpose of this study was to explore the alterations of the cortical-striatal network in HFS using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The fMRI data of 30 adult patients with primary unilateral HFS (15 left-side and 15 right-side) and 30 healthy controls were collected.