Super-Resolution Reconstruction of Multi-Slice T2-W FLAIR MRI Improves Multiple Sclerosis Lesion Segmentation.

Due to acquisition time constraints, T2-w FLAIR MRI of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients is often acquired with multi-slice 2D protocols with a low through-plane resolution rather than with high-resolution 3D protocols. Automated lesion segmentation on such low-resolution (LR) images, however, performs poorly and leads to inaccurate lesion volume estimates. Super-resolution reconstruction (SRR) methods can then be used to obtain a high-resolution (HR) image from multiple LR images to serve as input for lesion segmentation.

Investigating Tissue-Specific Abnormalities in Alzheimer's Disease with Multi-Shell Diffusion MRI.

Background: Most studies using diffusion-weighted MRI (DW-MRI) in Alzheimer's disease (AD) have focused their analyses on white matter (WM) microstructural changes using the diffusion (kurtosis) tensor model. Although recent works have addressed some limitations of the tensor model, such as the representation of crossing fibers and partial volume effects with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), the focus remains in modeling and analyzing the WM.

Objective: In this work, we present a brain analysis approach for DW-MRI that disentangles multiple tissue compartments as well as micro- and macroscopic effects to investigate differences between groups of subjects in the AD continuum and controls.

Quantification of cognitive impairment to characterize heterogeneity of patients at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease dementia.

Introduction: Neuropsychological test scores are limited and standard outcomes may mask the heterogeneity of cognitive impairment. This article presents the calculation and evaluation of six composite scores that quantify domain-specific impairment.

Methods: Parameters for composite scores calculation were learned by performing confirmatory factor analysis in a sample of participants from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative database.

Characterization of brain anatomical patterns by comparing region intensity distributions: Applications to the description of Alzheimer's disease.

Purpose: This work presents an automatic characterization of the Alzheimer's disease describing the illness as a multidirectional departure from a baseline defining the control state, being these directions determined by a distance between functional-equivalent anatomical regions.

Methods: After a brain parcellation, a region is described by its histogram of gray levels, and the Earth mover's distance establishes how close or far these regions are. The medoid of the control group is set as the reference and any brain is characterized by its set of distances to this medoid.