Disease progression in the first 5 years of treatment in multiple sclerosis: Predictive value of early brain and lesion volume changes.

Background: Whether the degree of inflammation (and its resolution) and neurodegeneration after treatment initiation predicts disease progression in multiple sclerosis (MS) remains unclear.

Objectives: To assess the predictive value of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-derived brain and lesion volume (LV) changes in years 1 and 2 of treatment for disease progression.

Methods: Patients receiving early interferon beta-1a treatment in REFLEX/REFLEXION ( = 262) were included.

The spatio-temporal relationship between concurrent lesion and brain atrophy changes in early multiple sclerosis: A post-hoc analysis of the REFLEXION study.

Background: White matter (WM) lesions and brain atrophy are present early in multiple sclerosis (MS). However, their spatio-temporal relationship remains unclear.

Methods: Yearly magnetic resonance images were analysed in 387 patients with a first clinical demyelinating event (FCDE) from the 5-year REFLEXION study.

The spatio-temporal relationship between white matter lesion volume changes and brain atrophy in clinically isolated syndrome and early multiple sclerosis.

Background: White matter lesions and brain atrophy are both present early in multiple sclerosis. However, the spatio-temporal relationship between atrophy and lesion processes remains unclear.

Methods: Yearly magnetic resonance images were analyzed in 392 patients with clinically isolated syndrome from the 5-year REFLEX/REFLEXION studies.

Clinical applicability of quantitative atrophy measures on MRI in patients suspected of Alzheimer's disease.

Objectives: Neurodegeneration in suspected Alzheimer's disease can be determined using visual rating or quantitative volumetric assessments. We examined the feasibility of volumetric measurements of gray matter (GMV) and hippocampal volume (HCV) and compared their diagnostic performance with visual rating scales in academic and non-academic memory clinics.

Materials And Methods: We included 231 patients attending local memory clinics (LMC) in the Netherlands and 501 of the academic Amsterdam Dementia Cohort (ADC).

Spinal cord atrophy in a primary progressive multiple sclerosis trial: Improved sample size using GBSI.

Background: We aimed to evaluate the implications for clinical trial design of the generalised boundary-shift integral (GBSI) for spinal cord atrophy measurement.

Methods: We included 220 primary-progressive multiple sclerosis patients from a phase 2 clinical trial, with baseline and week-48 3DT1-weighted MRI of the brain and spinal cord (1 × 1 × 1 mm), acquired separately. We obtained segmentation-based cross-sectional spinal cord area (CSA) at C1-2 (from both brain and spinal cord MRI) and C2-5 levels (from spinal cord MRI) using DeepSeg, and, then, we computed corresponding GBSI.

Can measuring hippocampal atrophy with a fully automatic method be substantially less noisy than manual segmentation over both 1 and 3 years?

To quantify the "segmentation noise" of several widely used fully automatic methods for measuring longitudinal hippocampal atrophy in Alzheimer's disease and compare the results to the segmentation noise of manual segmentation over both 1 and 3 years. The segmentation noise of 5 longitudinal hippocampal atrophy measurement methods was quantified, including checking its Gaussianity, using 264 subjects from the ADNI1 back-to-back (BTB) data set over both 1 year and 3 year intervals. The segmentation methods were FreeSurfer 5.

The value of subtraction MRI in detection of amyloid-related imaging abnormalities with oedema or effusion in Alzheimer's patients: An interobserver study.

Background: Immunotherapeutic treatments targeting amyloid-β plaques in Alzheimer's disease (AD) are associated with the presence of amyloid-related imaging abnormalities with oedema or effusion (ARIA-E), whose detection and classification is crucial to evaluate subjects enrolled in clinical trials.

Purpose: To investigate the applicability of subtraction MRI in the ARIA-E detection using an established ARIA-E-rating scale.

Methods: We included 75 AD patients receiving bapineuzumab treatment, including 29 ARIA-E cases.

Performance of five research-domain automated WM lesion segmentation methods in a multi-center MS study.

Background And Purpose: In vivoidentification of white matter lesions plays a key-role in evaluation of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). Automated lesion segmentation methods have been developed to substitute manual outlining, but evidence of their performance in multi-center investigations is lacking. In this work, five research-domain automated segmentation methods were evaluated using a multi-center MS dataset.

Reproducibility of hippocampal atrophy rates measured with manual, FreeSurfer, AdaBoost, FSL/FIRST and the MAPS-HBSI methods in Alzheimer's disease.

The purpose of this study is to assess the reproducibility of hippocampal atrophy rate measurements of commonly used fully-automated algorithms in Alzheimer disease (AD). The reproducibility of hippocampal atrophy rate for FSL/FIRST, AdaBoost, FreeSurfer, MAPS independently and MAPS combined with the boundary shift integral (MAPS-HBSI) were calculated. Back-to-back (BTB) 3D T1-weighted MPRAGE MRI from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI1) study at baseline and year one were used.

The SIENA/FSL whole brain atrophy algorithm is no more reproducible at 3T than 1.5 T for Alzheimer's disease.

The back-to-back (BTB) acquisition of MP-RAGE MRI scans of the Alzheimer׳s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI1) provides an excellent data set with which to check the reproducibility of brain atrophy measures. As part of ADNI1, 131 subjects received BTB MP-RAGEs at multiple time points and two field strengths of 3T and 1.5 T.

Mean upper cervical cord area (MUCCA) measurement in long-standing multiple sclerosis: relation to brain findings and clinical disability.

Background: The majority of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) present with spinal cord pathology. Spinal cord atrophy is thought to be a marker of disease severity, but in long-disease duration its relation to brain pathology and clinical disability is largely unknown.

Objective: Our aim was to investigate mean upper cervical cord area (MUCCA) in patients with long-standing MS and assess its relation to brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measures and clinical disability.

Long-term effects of amyloid, hypometabolism, and atrophy on neuropsychological functions.

Objective: To assess how amyloid deposition, glucose hypometabolism, and cerebral atrophy affect neuropsychological performance in patients with Alzheimer disease (AD) dementia, patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and controls over time.

Methods: A total of 41 patients with AD dementia, 28 patients with MCI, and 19 controls underwent [(11)C]-Pittsburgh compound B ((11)C-PiB) and [(18)F]-2-fluoro-2-deoxy-d-glucose ((18)F-FDG)-PET and MRI scans at baseline. We extracted global binding potential for (11)C-PiB, the number of abnormal voxels for (18)F-FDG, and gray matter volumes using SIENAX for MRI as measures of amyloid, hypometabolism, and atrophy.

Hippocampal volume change measurement: quantitative assessment of the reproducibility of expert manual outlining and the automated methods FreeSurfer and FIRST.

Background: To measure hippocampal volume change in Alzheimer's disease (AD) or mild cognitive impairment (MCI), expert manual delineation is often used because of its supposed accuracy. It has been suggested that expert outlining yields poorer reproducibility as compared to automated methods, but this has not been investigated.

Aim: To determine the reproducibilities of expert manual outlining and two common automated methods for measuring hippocampal atrophy rates in healthy aging, MCI and AD.

Measurements of medial temporal lobe atrophy for prediction of Alzheimer's disease in subjects with mild cognitive impairment.

Our aim was to compare the predictive accuracy of 4 different medial temporal lobe measurements for Alzheimer's disease (AD) in subjects with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Manual hippocampal measurement, automated atlas-based hippocampal measurement, a visual rating scale (MTA-score), and lateral ventricle measurement were compared. Predictive accuracy for AD 2 years after baseline was assessed by receiver operating characteristics analyses with area under the curve as outcome.

Location of brain lesions predicts conversion of clinically isolated syndromes to multiple sclerosis.

Objectives: To assess in a large population of patients with clinically isolated syndrome (CIS) the relevance of brain lesion location and frequency in predicting 1-year conversion to multiple sclerosis (MS).

Methods: In this multicenter, retrospective study, clinical and MRI data at onset and clinical follow-up at 1 year were collected for 1,165 patients with CIS. On T2-weighted MRI, we generated lesion probability maps of white matter (WM) lesion location and frequency.

Assessing the reproducibility of the SienaX and Siena brain atrophy measures using the ADNI back-to-back MP-RAGE MRI scans.

SienaX and Siena are widely used and fully automated algorithms for measuring whole brain volume and volume change in cross-sectional and longitudinal MRI studies and are particularly useful in studies of brain atrophy. The reproducibility of the algorithms was assessed using the 3D T1 weighted MP-RAGE scans from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) study. The back-to-back (BTB) MP-RAGE scans in the ADNI data set makes it a valuable benchmark against which to assess the performance of algorithms of measuring atrophy in the human brain with MRI scans.

Long-interval T2-weighted subtraction magnetic resonance imaging: a powerful new outcome measure in multiple sclerosis trials.

Objective: To compare long-interval T2-weighted subtraction (T2w-Sub) imaging with monthly gadolinium-enhanced T1-weighted (Gd-T1w) imaging for (1) detection of active lesions, (2) assessment of treatment efficacy, and (3) statistical power, in a multiple sclerosis (MS), phase 2, clinical trial setting.

Methods: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data over 9 months from 120 patients (61 treatment, 59 placebo) from the oral temsirolimus trial were used. T2w-Sub images were scored for active lesions, independent of the original reading of the monthly Gd-T1w images.

Improved detection of active multiple sclerosis lesions: 3D subtraction imaging.

Purpose: To examine the benefits of using near-isotropic single-slab three-dimensional (3D) magnetic resonance (MR) imaging for the creation of subtraction images and to evaluate their performance in the detection of active multiple sclerosis (MS) brain lesions in comparison with two-dimensional (2D) subtraction images.

Materials And Methods: The study protocol was approved by the local ethics review board and all subjects gave written informed consent before investigation. Three-dimensional MR sequences, including double inversion-recovery, fluid-attenuated inversion recovery, T2-weighted, and T1-weighted magnetization-prepared rapid acquisition gradient-echo (MP-RAGE), and corresponding 2D sequences were performed twice in 14 patients (eight women, six men; mean age, 37.

Accelerating regional atrophy rates in the progression from normal aging to Alzheimer's disease.

We investigated progression of atrophy in vivo, in Alzheimer's disease (AD), and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). We included 64 patients with AD, 44 with MCI and 34 controls with serial MRI examinations (interval 1.8 ± 0.

Subtraction MR images in a multiple sclerosis multicenter clinical trial setting.

Purpose: To explore the applicability of subtraction magnetic resonance (MR) images to (a) detect active multiple sclerosis (MS) lesions, (b) directly quantify lesion load change, and (c) detect treatment effects (distinguish treatment arms) in a placebo-controlled multicenter clinical trial by comparing the subtraction scheme with a conventional pair-wise comparison of nonregistered MR images.

Materials And Methods: Forty-six pairs of MR studies in 40 patients (31 women; mean age, 31.9 years) from a multicenter clinical trial were used.

Multi-contrast, isotropic, single-slab 3D MR imaging in multiple sclerosis.

To describe signal and contrast properties of an isotropic, single-slab 3D dataset [double inversion-recovery (DIR), fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR), T2, and T1-weighted magnetization prepared rapid acquisition gradient-echo (MPRAGE)] and to evaluate its performance in detecting multiple sclerosis (MS) brain lesions compared to 2D T2-weighted spin-echo (T2SE). All single-slab 3D sequences and 2D-T2SE were acquired in 16 MS patients and 9 age-matched healthy controls. Lesions were scored independently by two raters and characterized anatomically.

Adaptation of lateral pterygoid and anterior digastric muscles after surgical mandibular advancement procedures in different vertical craniofacial types: a magnetic resonance imaging study.

Objective: Surgical mandibular advancement procedures induce major adaptations of jaw-closing muscles. In this study, adaptation of antagonist muscles, the lateral pterygoid (LPM) and anterior digastric (DigA) muscles, was evaluated.

Study Design: Eighteen adult patients with mandibular retrognathia and individually varying vertical craniofacial dimensions were treated with bilateral sagittal split osteotomies (BSSO), in some cases combined with a Le Fort I osteotomy (LF Bimax).

Precuneus atrophy in early-onset Alzheimer's disease: a morphometric structural MRI study.

Introduction: Alzheimer's disease (AD) usually first presents in elderly patients, but may also develop at an earlier age. Patients with an early age at onset tend to present with complaints other than memory impairment, such as visuospatial problems or apraxia, which may reflect a different distribution of cortical involvement. In this study we set out to investigate whether age at onset in patients with AD determines the pattern of atrophy on cerebral MRI scans.

Adaptation of jaw closing muscles after surgical mandibular advancement procedures in different vertical craniofacial types: a magnetic resonance imaging study.

Objective: Surgical mandibular advancement influences the biomechanics of the mandible and as a result may provoke relapse. In this study, the adaptation of the masseter (MAS) and medial pterygoid muscles (MPM) after surgical mandibular advancement was evaluated.

Study Design: Of 12 patients with mandibular retrognathia and varying vertical craniofacial morphology, axial and 30 degrees angulated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan series were taken preoperatively and 10 to 48 months postoperatively.

Whole-brain T1 mapping in multiple sclerosis: global changes of normal-appearing gray and white matter.

Purpose: To prospectively investigate whether T1 changes in normal-appearing white matter (WM) and normal-appearing gray matter (GM) in multiple sclerosis (MS) are global or regional and their relationship to disease type.

Materials And Methods: The institutional ethics review board approved study; written informed consent was obtained. Whole-brain T1 maps were obtained in 67 patients with MS and 24 healthy control subjects with three-dimensional fast low-angle shot flip angle-array method, with correction for B(1) imperfections.