Helmholtz Gemeinschaft

Search
Browse
Statistics
Feeds

Comparison of probabilistic tractography and tract-based spatial statistics for assessing optic radiation damage in patients with autoimmune inflammatory disorders of the central nervous system

[thumbnail of Article]
Preview
PDF (Article) - Requires a PDF viewer such as GSview, Xpdf or Adobe Acrobat Reader
1MB
[thumbnail of Supplementary Material] MS Word (Supplementary Material)
46kB

Item Type:Article
Title:Comparison of probabilistic tractography and tract-based spatial statistics for assessing optic radiation damage in patients with autoimmune inflammatory disorders of the central nervous system
Creators Name:Kuchling, J., Backner, Y., Oertel, F.C., Raz, N., Bellmann-Strobl, J., Ruprecht, K., Paul, F., Levin, N., Brandt, A.U. and Scheel, M.
Abstract:BACKGROUND: Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) can evaluate microstructural tissue damage in the optic radiation (OR) of patients with clinically isolated syndrome (CIS), early relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis and neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorders (NMOSD). Different post-processing techniques, e.g. tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) and probabilistic tractography, exist to quantify this damage. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the capacity of TBSS-based atlas region-of-interest (ROI) combination with 1) posterior thalamic radiation ROIs from the Johns Hopkins University atlas (JHU-TBSS), 2) Juelich Probabilistic ROIs (JUEL-TBSS) and tractography methods using 3) ConTrack (CON-PROB) and 4) constrained spherical deconvolution tractography (CSD-PROB) to detect OR damage in patients with a) NMOSD with prior ON (NMOSD-ON), b) CIS and early RRMS patients with ON (CIS/RRMS-ON) and c) CIS and early RRMS patients without prior ON (CIS/RRMS-NON) against healthy controls (HCs). METHODS: Twenty-three NMOSD-ON, 18 CIS/RRMS-ON, 21 CIS/RRMS-NON, and 26 HCs underwent 3 T MRI. DTI data analysis was carried out using JUEL-TBSS, JHU-TBSS, CON-PROB and CSD-PROB. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) and visual acuity testing was performed in the majority of patients and HCs. RESULTS: Absolute OR fractional anisotropy (FA) values differed between all methods but showed good correlation and agreement in Bland-Altman analysis. OR FA values between NMOSD and HC differed throughout the methodologies (p-values ranging from p < 0.0001 to 0.0043). ROC-analysis and effect size estimation revealed higher AUCs and R(2) for CSD-PROB (AUC = 0.812; R(2) = 0.282) and JHU-TBSS (AUC = 0.756; R(2) = 0.262), compared to CON-PROB (AUC = 0.742; R(2) = 0.179) and JUEL-TBSS (AUC = 0.719; R(2) = 0.161). Differences between CIS/RRMS-NON and HC were only observable in CSD-PROB (AUC = 0.796; R(2) = 0.094). No significant differences between CIS/RRMS-ON and HC were detected by any of the methods. CONCLUSIONS: All DTI post-processing techniques facilitated the detection of OR damage in patient groups with severe microstructural OR degradation. The comparison of distinct disease groups by use of different methods may lead to different - either false-positive or false-negative - results. Since different DTI post-processing approaches seem to provide complementary information on OR damage, application of distinct methods may depend on the relevant research question.
Keywords:DTI, Neuromyelitis Optica, Multiple Sclerosis, TBSS, Probabilistic Tractography, Optic Radiation
Source:NeuroImage: Clinical
ISSN:2213-1582
Publisher:Elsevier
Volume:19
Page Range:538-550
Date:8 May 2018
Official Publication:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nicl.2018.05.004
PubMed:View item in PubMed

Repository Staff Only: item control page

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

Open Access
MDC Library