Reliable measurements of brain atrophy in individual patients with multiple sclerosis. Issue 9 (19th July 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Smeets, Dirk; Ribbens, Annemie; Sima, Diana M.; Cambron, Melissa; Horakova, Dana; Jain, Saurabh; Maertens, Anke; Van Vlierberghe, Eline; Terzopoulos, Vasilis; Van Binst, Anne‐Marie; Vaneckova, Manuela; Krasensky, Jan; Uher, Tomas; Seidl, Zdenek; De Keyser, Jacques; Nagels, Guy; De Mey, Johan; Havrdova, Eva; Van Hecke, Wim
• Is Part Of: Brain and behavior. Volume 6:Issue 9(2016)
• Page Start: n/a
• Page End: n/a
• Publication Date: 2016-07-19
• Subjects: brain atrophy -- magnetic resonance images -- MSmetrix -- multiple sclerosis; Neurology -- Periodicals; Neurosciences -- Periodicals; Psychology -- Periodicals; Psychiatry -- Periodicals; 616.8005
• DOI: 10.1002/brb3.518
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2162-3279

Abstract

Abstract: Introduction: As neurodegeneration is recognized as a major contributor to disability in multiple sclerosis (MS), brain atrophy quantification could have a high added value in clinical practice to assess treatment efficacy and disease progression, provided that it has a sufficiently low measurement error to draw meaningful conclusions for an individual patient. Method: In this paper, we present an automated longitudinal method based on Jacobian integration for measuring whole‐brain and gray matter atrophy based on anatomical magnetic resonance images (MRI), named MSmetrix . MSmetrix is specifically designed to measure atrophy in patients with MS, by including iterative lesion segmentation and lesion filling based on FLAIR and T1‐weighted MRI scans. Results: MSmetrix is compared with SIENA with respect to test–retest error and consistency, resulting in an average test–retest error on an MS data set of 0.13% (MSmetrix ) and 0.17% (SIENA) and a consistency error of 0.07% (MSmetrix ) and 0.05% (SIENA). On a healthy subject data set including physiological variability the test–retest is 0.19% (MSmetrix ) and 0.31% (SIENA). Conclusion: Therefore, we can conclude that MSmetrix could be of added value in clinical practice for the follow‐up of treatment and disease progression in MS patients. Abstract : The manuscript highlights the importance of the measurement error for the translation of brain atrophy (measured on MRI) from clinical research (group level) to clinical practice (individual level). We also describe a method that is able to bridge this gap. We believe the translation is essential for neuroimaging research and will have a huge impact in clinical neurology and neuroradiology.