Dataset Information

Multicenter reproducibility study of diffusion MRI and fiber tractography of the lumbosacral nerves.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has been applied in the lumbar and sacral nerves in vivo, but information about the reproducibility of this method is needed before DTI can be used reliably in clinical practice across centers.

Purpose

In this multicenter study the reproducibility of DTI of the lumbosacral nerves in healthy volunteers was investigated.

Study type

Prospective control series.

Subjects

Twenty healthy subjects.

Field strength/sequence

3T MRI. 3D turbo spin echo, and 3.0 mm isotropic DTI scan.

Assessment

The DTI scan was performed three times (twice in the same session, intrascan reproducibility, and once after an hour, interscan reproducibility). At site 2, 1 week later, the protocol was repeated (interweek reproducibility). Fiber tractography (FT) of the lumbar and sacral nerves (L3-S2) was performed to obtain values for fractional anisotropy, mean, axial, and radial diffusivity.

Statistical tests

Reproducibility was determined using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), and power calculations were performed.

Results

FT was successful and reproducible in all datasets. ICCs for all diffusion parameters were high for intrascan (ranging from 0.70-0.85), intermediate for interscan (ranging from 0.61-0.73), and interweek reliability (ranging from 0.58-0.62). There were small but significant differences between the interweek diffusivity values (P < 0.0005). Depending on the effect size, nerve location, and parameter of interest, power calculations showed that sample sizes between 10 and 232 subjects are needed for cross-sectional studies.

Data conclusion

We found that DTI and FT of the lumbosacral nerves have intermediate to high reproducibility within and between scans. Based on these results, 10-58 subjects are needed to find a 10% change in parameters in cross-sectional studies of the lumbar and sacral nerves. The small significant differences of the interweek comparison suggest that results from longitudinal studies need to be interpreted carefully, since small differences may also be caused by factors other than disease progression or therapeutic effects.

Level of evidence

1 Technical Efficacy: Stage 2 J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2018;48:951-963.

SUBMITTER: Haakma W

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6221026 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Multicenter reproducibility study of diffusion MRI and fiber tractography of the lumbosacral nerves.

Haakma Wieke W Hendrikse Jeroen J Uhrenholt Lars L Leemans Alexander A Warner Thorup Boel Lene L Pedersen Michael M Froeling Martijn M

Journal of magnetic resonance imaging : JMRI 20180209 4

<h4>Background</h4>Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has been applied in the lumbar and sacral nerves in vivo, but information about the reproducibility of this method is needed before DTI can be used reliably in clinical practice across centers.<h4>Purpose</h4>In this multicenter study the reproducibility of DTI of the lumbosacral nerves in healthy volunteers was investigated.<h4>Study type</h4>Prospective control series.<h4>Subjects</h4>Twenty healthy subjects.<h4>Field strength/sequence</h4>3T M ...[more]

PMID: 29424083

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Project description:Advances in diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DW-MRI) have led to many alternative diffusion sampling strategies and analysis methodologies. A common objective among methods is estimation of white matter fiber orientations within each voxel, as doing so permits in-vivo fiber-tracking and the ability to study brain connectivity and networks. Knowledge of how DW-MRI sampling schemes affect fiber estimation accuracy, tractography and the ability to recover complex white-matter pathways, differences between results due to choice of analysis method, and which method(s) perform optimally for specific data sets, all remain important problems, especially as tractography-based studies become common. In this work, we begin to address these concerns by developing sets of simulated diffusion-weighted brain images which we then use to quantitatively evaluate the performance of six DW-MRI analysis methods in terms of estimated fiber orientation accuracy, false-positive (spurious) and false-negative (missing) fiber rates, and fiber-tracking. The analysis methods studied are: 1) a two-compartment "ball and stick" model (BSM) (Behrens et al., 2003); 2) a non-negativity constrained spherical deconvolution (CSD) approach (Tournier et al., 2007); 3) analytical q-ball imaging (QBI) (Descoteaux et al., 2007); 4) q-ball imaging with Funk-Radon and Cosine Transform (FRACT) (Haldar and Leahy, 2013); 5) q-ball imaging within constant solid angle (CSA) (Aganj et al., 2010); and 6) a generalized Fourier transform approach known as generalized q-sampling imaging (GQI) (Yeh et al., 2010). We investigate these methods using 20, 30, 40, 60, 90 and 120 evenly distributed q-space samples of a single shell, and focus on a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR = 18) and diffusion-weighting (b = 1000 s/mm(2)) common to clinical studies. We found that the BSM and CSD methods consistently yielded the least fiber orientation error and simultaneously greatest detection rate of fibers. Fiber detection rate was found to be the most distinguishing characteristic between the methods, and a significant factor for complete recovery of tractography through complex white-matter pathways. For example, while all methods recovered similar tractography of prominent white matter pathways of limited fiber crossing, CSD (which had the highest fiber detection rate, especially for voxels containing three fibers) recovered the greatest number of fibers and largest fraction of correct tractography for complex three-fiber crossing regions. The synthetic data sets, ground-truth, and tools for quantitative evaluation are publically available on the NITRC website as the project "Simulated DW-MRI Brain Data Sets for Quantitative Evaluation of Estimated Fiber Orientations" at http://www.nitrc.org/projects/sim_dwi_brain.

Dataset Information

Multicenter reproducibility study of diffusion MRI and fiber tractography of the lumbosacral nerves.

Background

Purpose

Study type

Subjects

Field strength/sequence

Assessment

Statistical tests

Results

Data conclusion

Level of evidence

Publications

Multicenter reproducibility study of diffusion MRI and fiber tractography of the lumbosacral nerves.

Similar Datasets

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