Quantitative Neuroimaging Software for Clinical Assessment of Hippocampal Volumes on MR Imaging.
BACKGROUND
Multiple neurological disorders including Alzheimer's disease (AD), mesial temporal sclerosis, and mild traumatic brain injury manifest with volume loss on brain MRI. Subtle volume loss is particularly seen early in AD. While prior research has demonstrated the value of this additional information from quantitative neuroimaging, very few applications have been approved for clinical use. Here we describe a US FDA cleared software program, NeuroreaderTM, for assessment of clinical hippocampal volume on brain MRI.


OBJECTIVE
To present the validation of hippocampal volumetrics on a clinical software program.


METHODS
Subjects were drawn (n = 99) from the Alzheimer Disease Neuroimaging Initiative study. Volumetric brain MR imaging was acquired in both 1.5 T (n = 59) and 3.0 T (n = 40) scanners in participants with manual hippocampal segmentation. Fully automated hippocampal segmentation and measurement was done using a multiple atlas approach. The Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) measured the level of spatial overlap between NeuroreaderTM and gold standard manual segmentation from 0 to 1 with 0 denoting no overlap and 1 representing complete agreement. DSC comparisons between 1.5 T and 3.0 T scanners were done using standard independent samples T-tests.


RESULTS
In the bilateral hippocampus, mean DSC was 0.87 with a range of 0.78-0.91 (right hippocampus) and 0.76-0.91 (left hippocampus). Automated segmentation agreement with manual segmentation was essentially equivalent at 1.5 T (DSC = 0.879) versus 3.0 T (DSC = 0.872).


CONCLUSIONS
This work provides a description and validation of a software program that can be applied in measuring hippocampal volume, a biomarker that is frequently abnormal in AD and other neurological disorders.
Brainreader, Horsens, Denmark.
Jamila
J
Ahdidan
UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Cyrus A
CA
Raji
Department of Radiology, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA.
Edgar A
EA
DeYoe
Department of Radiology, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA.
Jedidiah
J
Mathis
The Alexandra Institute, Aarhus, Denmark.
Karsten Ø
KØ
Noe
The Alexandra Institute, Aarhus, Denmark.
Jens
J
Rimestad
The Alexandra Institute, Aarhus, Denmark.
Thomas K
TK
Kjeldsen
The Alexandra Institute, Aarhus, Denmark.
Jesper
J
Mosegaard
Departments of Psychology, Psychiatry, and Neurology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
James T
JT
Becker
Department of Neurology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Oscar
O
Lopez
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000175:diagnosis*; D060825:Cognitive Dysfunction / Q000473:pathology; D005260:Female; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012984:Software
Hippocampus; magnetic resonance imaging; quantification