Estimating cerebral atrophy in multiple sclerosis patients from various MR pulse sequences

Abstract

MRI estimates of CA are dependent on both the type of PS and SA; therefore, the choice of SA technique and PS should be consistent during an MS treatment trial. The progression of CA in MS should only be used as a secondary or tertiary outcome measure in treatment trials until a better understanding of how this measurement is affected by the disease, the image acquisition and analysis techniques.

Whole-brain atrophy in multiple sclerosis measured by two segmentation processes from various MRI sequences

“…A likely exception to this is techniques that rely on the manual or semi-automated segmentation of the brain and CSF space [20,27]. For longitudinal studies, the series of scans is often registered with this segmented brain so that the segmentation procedure only needs to be performed one.…”

“…This study examines the scanrescan reproducibility achievable using different T 1 -weighted pulse sequences with both a fully automated, and a semiautomated (SA) method of analysis. Since this work was commenced, a similar study has recently been published [20]; however, the current work extends this by comparing scan -rescan reproducibility, fully automated vs. semi-automated processing, and a wide range of pulse sequences acquired on two MRI scanners. This latter aspect is especially interesting, since in the context of multi-center clinical trials, it is important to show that finding of reproducibility will generalize to different types of scanner.…”

Relationship between inflammatory lesions and cerebral atrophy in multiple sclerosis

“…Brain fractional volume (BFV) was determined on each monthly scan using the automated ADPK mean program previously described. 35 The coefficient of variation (COV) was determined by the following equation: COV ϭ SD of two sets of BFV measurements/mean of the BFV measurements x 100. The intrarater COV was 0.28% and inter-rater COV was 0.58%.…”

The role of nonconventional magnetic resonance imaging techniques in demyelinating disorders

“…Several image analysis techniques are currently being used to measure CA, spinal cord atrophy (SCA), and optic nerve atrophy (ONA) [36,37], including linear and regional measures, whole brain segmentation approaches, and brain registration-based methods. Miller et al [34••] have recently reviewed the varied approaches for semiautomatic to automatic segmentation of the brain and determining CA.…”