Harmonization of Longitudinal Diffusion Tensor Imaging Data of the Pediatric Cervical and Thoracic Spinal Cord at 3T Using Longitudinal ComBat.

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) of the spinal cord has been extensively used to identify biomarkers for spinal cord pathology. Previously, the longitudinal ComBat (longComBat) technique was examined to reduce scanner effects in multi-site, multi-scanner spinal cord DTI data. This study aimed to assess its effectiveness on longitudinal scans using a single-scanner pediatric dataset, including healthy and spinal cord injury (SCI) subjects.

Harmonization of multi-site diffusion tensor imaging data for cervical and thoracic spinal cord at 1.5 T and 3 T using longitudinal ComBat.

MRI scanner hardware, field strengths, and sequence parameters are major variables in diffusion studies of the spinal cord. Reliability between scanners is not well known, particularly for the thoracic cord. DTI data was collected for the entire cervical and thoracic spinal cord in thirty healthy adult subjects with different MR vendors and field strengths.

Metal artifact reduction around cervical spine implant using diffusion tensor imaging at 3T: A phantom study.

Purpose: Diffusion MRI continues to play a key role in non-invasively assessing spinal cord integrity and pre-operative injury evaluation. However, post-operative Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) acquisition of patients with metal implants results in severe geometric distortion. We propose and demonstrate a method to alleviate the technical challenges facing the acquisition of DTI on post-operative cases and longitudinal evaluation of therapeutics.

Metal Artifact Reduction Around Cervical Spine Implant Using Diffusion Tensor Imaging at 3T: A Phantom Study.

Diffusion MRI continues to play a key role in non-invasively assessing spinal cord integrity and pre-operative injury evaluation. However, post-operative Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) acquisition of a patient with a metal implant results in severe geometric image distortion. A method has been proposed here to alleviate the technical challenges facing the acquisition of DTI in post-operative cases and to evaluate longitudinal therapeutics.

Amplitude synchronization of spontaneous activity of medial and lateral temporal gyri reveals altered thalamic connectivity in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy.

In this study, we examined whether amplitude synchronization of medial (MTL) and lateral (LTL) temporal lobes can detect unique alterations in patients with MTL epilepsy (mTLE) with mesial temporal sclerosis (MTS). This was a retrospective study of preoperative resting-state fMRI (rsfMRI) data from 31 patients with mTLE with MTS (age 23-69) and 16 controls (age 21-35). fMRI data were preprocessed based on a multistep preprocessing pipeline and registered to a standard space.

Neuromotor prosthetic to treat stroke-related paresis: N-of-1 trial.

Background: Functional recovery of arm movement typically plateaus following a stroke, leaving chronic motor deficits. Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) may be a potential treatment for post-stroke deficits.

Methods: In this n-of-1 trial (NCT03913286), a person with chronic subcortical stroke with upper-limb motor impairment used a powered elbow-wrist-hand orthosis that opened and closed the affected hand using cortical activity, recorded from a percutaneous BCI comprised of four microelectrode arrays implanted in the ipsilesional precentral gyrus, based on decoding of spiking patterns and high frequency field potentials generated by imagined hand movements.

Clinical Utility of Diffusion Tensor Imaging as a Biomarker to Identify Microstructural Changes in Pediatric Spinal Cord Injury.

Background: Lack of clarity about the neurological consequence of spinal cord injury (SCI) in children causes speculation about diagnoses, recovery potential, and treatment effectiveness. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has shown promising results as a biomarker to evaluate spinal cord integrity at a microstructural level.

Objectives: To look at the difference between pediatric participants with and without SCI to determine which DTI metrics best categorize spinal cord tissue damage and to correlate DTI metrics with two clinical measures: Capabilities of the Upper Extremity Test (CUE-T) and Spinal Cord Independence Measure version III (SCIM-III).

DTI of chronic spinal cord injury in children without MRI abnormalities (SCIWOMR) and with pathology on MRI and comparison to severity of motor impairment.

Study Design: This investigation was a cohort study that included: 36 typically developing (TD) children and 19 children with spinal cord lesions who underwent spinal cord MRI.

Objectives: To investigate diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) cervical and thoracic spinal cord changes in pediatric patients that have clinically traumatic and non-traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) without MR (SCIWOMR) abnormalities.

Setting: Thomas Jefferson University, Temple University, Shriners Hospitals for Children all in Philadelphia, USA.

Resting-State Functional MRI Metrics in Patients With Chronic Mild Traumatic Brain Injury and Their Association With Clinical Cognitive Performance.

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) accounts for more than 80% of people experiencing brain injuries. Symptoms of mTBI include short-term and long-term adverse clinical outcomes. In this study, resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) was conducted to measure voxel-based indices including fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF), regional homogeneity (ReHo), and functional connectivity (FC) in patients suffering from chronic mTBI; 64 patients with chronic mTBI at least 3 months post injury and 40 healthy controls underwent rs-fMRI scanning.

Brain White Matter Abnormality Induced by Chronic Spinal Cord Injury in the Pediatric Population: A Preliminary Tract-based Spatial Statistic Study.

Tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) is a diffusion tensor imaging (DTI)-based processing technique that aims to improve the objectivity and interpretability of analysis of multisubject diffusion imaging studies. This study used TBSS to measure quantitative changes in brain white matter structures following spinal cord injury (SCI). Eighteen SCI subjects aged 8-20 years old (mean age, 16.

Correlations of diffusion tensor imaging and clinical measures with spinal cord cross-sectional area measurements in pediatric spinal cord injury patients.

Purpose: The purpose of this work was to employ a semi-automatic method for measuring spinal cord cross-sectional area (SCCSA) and investigate the correlations between diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) metrics and SCCSA for the cervical and thoracic spinal cord for typically developing pediatric subjects and pediatric subject with spinal cord injury.

Methods: Ten typically developing (TD) pediatric subjects and ten pediatric subjects with spinal cord injury (SCI) were imaged using a Siemens Verio 3 T MR scanner to acquire DTI and high-resolution anatomic scans covering the cervical and thoracic spinal cord (C1-T12). SCCSA was measured using a semi-automated edge detection algorithm for the entire spinal cord.

Hybrid diffusion imaging reveals altered white matter tract integrity and associations with symptoms and cognitive dysfunction in chronic traumatic brain injury.

The detection and association of in vivo biomarkers in white matter (WM) pathology after acute and chronic mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) are needed to improve care and develop therapies. In this study, we used the diffusion MRI method of hybrid diffusion imaging (HYDI)to detect white matter alterations in patients with chronic TBI (cTBI). 40 patients with cTBI presenting symptoms at least three months post injury, and 17 healthy controls underwent magnetic resonance HYDI.

Fundamentals of Preoperative Task Functional Brain Mapping.

Blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) imaging is gaining traction in the clinical realm as a measure for quantifying changes in regional blood flow in response to external stimuli. Through the evoked signal changes that are a consequence of hemoglobin's intrinsic paramagnetic properties, this technique allows for the statistical mapping of brain regions associated with a given task, which has broad applications in preneurosurgical planning for tumor resection. From an acquisition perspective, collection of BOLD data most commonly requires the use of echo planar imaging readout schemes.

Diffusion Tensor Imaging Assessment of Regional White Matter Changes in the Cervical and Thoracic Spinal Cord in Pediatric Subjects.

There are no studies to date,describing changes in the diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) metrics of the white matter (WM) regions of the entire cervical and thoracic spinal cord (SC) remote from the lesion in pediatric spinal cord injury (SCI) subjects. The purpose of this study was to determine whether DTI at sites cephalad and caudal to a lesion provides measures of cord abnormalities in children with chronic SCI. A retrospective study included 10 typically developing subjects (TD) and 10 subjects with chronic SCI who underwent SC imaging in 2014-2017.

Characterization of spinal cord diffusion tensor imaging metrics in clinically asymptomatic pediatric subjects with incidental congenital lesions.

Study Design: Retrospective study.

Objectives: To perform quantitative DTI measurements of the entire cervical and thoracic spinal cord (SC) in typically developing (TD) pediatric subjects with incidental findings of syringomyelia or hydromyelia on conventional MRI and in a TD population without any abnormalities.

Setting: USA.

Age related diffusion and tractography changes in typically developing pediatric cervical and thoracic spinal cord.

Background And Objective: Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and diffusion tensor tractography (DTT) are two techniques that can measure white matter integrity of the spinal cord. Recently, DTI indices have been shown to change with age. The purpose of this study is (a) to evaluate the maturational states of the entire pediatric spinal cord using DTI and DTT indices including fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD), mean length of white matter fiber tracts and tract density and (b) to analyze the DTI and DTT parameters along the entire spinal cord as a function of spinal cord levels and age.

Application of Color Transformation Techniques in Pediatric Spinal Cord MR Images: Typically Developing and Spinal Cord Injury Population.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate an improved and reliable visualization method for pediatric spinal cord MR images in healthy subjects and patients with spinal cord injury (SCI). A total of 15 pediatric volunteers (10 healthy subjects and 5 subjects with cervical SCI) with a mean age of 11.41 years (range 8-16 years) were recruited and scanned using a 3.

Identification of ghost artifact using texture analysis in pediatric spinal cord diffusion tensor images.

Purpose: Ghost artifacts are a major contributor to degradation of spinal cord diffusion tensor images. A multi-stage post-processing pipeline was designed, implemented and validated to automatically remove ghost artifacts arising from reduced field of view diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) of the pediatric spinal cord.

Method: A total of 12 pediatric subjects including 7 healthy subjects (mean age=11.

Reduced Field of View Diffusion Tensor Imaging and Fiber Tractography of the Pediatric Cervical and Thoracic Spinal Cord Injury.

The aim of this study is to assess the utility and effectiveness of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and diffusion tensor tractography (DTT) of the entire pediatric cervical and thoracic spinal cord toward discrimination of typically developing (TD) controls and subjects with spinal cord injury (SCI). A total of 43 pediatric subjects, including 23 TD subjects ranging in age from 6 to 16 years old and 20 subjects with SCI ranging in age from 7 to 16 years, were recruited and scanned using a 3.0 Tesla magnetic resonance scanner.

Spatially selective 2D RF inner field of view (iFOV) diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) of the pediatric spinal cord.

Magnetic resonance based diffusion imaging has been gaining more utility and clinical relevance over the past decade. Using conventional echo planar techniques, it is possible to acquire and characterize water diffusion within the central nervous system (CNS); namely in the form of Diffusion Weighted Imaging (DWI) and Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI). While each modality provides valuable clinical information in terms of the presence of diffusion and its directionality, both techniques are limited to assuming an ideal Gaussian distribution for water displacement with no intermolecular interactions.

Inter- and intra-rater reliability of diffusion tensor imaging parameters in the normal pediatric spinal cord.

Aim: To assess inter- and intra-rater reliability (agreement) between two region of interest (ROI) methods in pediatric spinal cord diffusion tensor imaging (DTI).

Methods: Inner-Field-of-View DTI data previously acquired from ten pediatric healthy subjects (mean age = 12.10 years) was used to assess for reliability.

An investigation of motion correction algorithms for pediatric spinal cord DTI in healthy subjects and patients with spinal cord injury.

Patient and physiological motion can cause artifacts in DTI of the spinal cord which can impact image quality and diffusion indices. The purpose of this investigation was to determine a reliable motion correction method for pediatric spinal cord DTI and show effects of motion correction on DTI parameters in healthy subjects and patients with spinal cord injury. Ten healthy subjects and ten subjects with spinal cord injury were scanned using a 3T scanner.

Cerebral activation during the test of spinal cord injury severity in children: an FMRI methodological study.

Background: The International Standards for Neurological Classification of Spinal Cord Injury (ISNCSCI) are internationally accepted to determine and classify the extent of motor and sensory impairment along with severity (ASIA Impairment Scale [AIS]) following spinal cord injury (SCI). The anorectal examination is a component of the ISNCSCI that determines injury severity. There is a void in the health care literature on the validity of the anorectal examination as an indication of SCI severity.