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By: Tracy Ssali Medical Biophysics 3970z April 4 th 2012 Supervisors : Keith St. Lawrence, PhD Udunna Anazodo , PhD candidate. Correction of Partial Volume Effects in Arterial Spin Labeling MRI. Introduction.
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By: Tracy Ssali Medical Biophysics 3970z April 4th 2012 Supervisors: Keith St. Lawrence, PhD UdunnaAnazodo, PhD candidate Correction of Partial Volume Effects in Arterial Spin Labeling MRI
Introduction • Brain Tissue consists of Grey Matter (GM) White Matter (WM) and Cerebral Spinal Fluid (CSF) • Perfusion in the brain is indicative of function • Irregular flow in grey matter is indicative of disease state [1] • Arterial Spin Labeling is a novel technique used to measure perfusion in the brain
Theory – Why ASL MRI? • Established techniques require radioactive exogenous tracers which cannot be used on certain patient populations, and require long clearance times.[2] • ASL MRI uses magnetized water molecules in arterial blood as a tracer to measure tissue perfusion non-invasively
Theory - ASL MRI • Creating the control image • Creating the tagged image • Arterial blood is magnetically labeled using radiofrequency pulses • A delay time is allowed for the blood to reach the brain • When the labeled water interacts with the magnetic field, it affects the signal being produced
ASL Image ≈ CBF Theory – How ASL MRI Works Subtract Adapted from Wolf and DetreNeurother Vol. 4, 346–359, July 2007
Theory - Partial Volume Effects • Perfusion images are taken in quick succession • Information from the labeled blood must be captured before it relaxes • Blood water has a half life of around 1-2s[3] Pettersen Br J Radiology 2006
Theory – Partial Volume Effects (Cont’d) • Point spread blurring • Resolution is not fine enough to resolve GM, WM and CSF • Voxel size is approximately 3 x 3 x 3mm [2]
Theory – Separating the Signals • Partial Volume Effects (PVE) correction • Estimates the partial signal contribution based on the contrast information from anatomical MRI image volume
Theory – Partial Volume Effects Correction • Kernel Regression Algorithm • Based on the size of the kernel the algorithm assesses a radius around the centre point to reassign a partial volume
Theory – Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) • Signal – Mean signal of GM, WM or CSF • Noise – Standard deviation 40 20 Deibler et al AJNR march 2008
Objective • To measure the signal to noise ratio before and after the partial volume effects correction
Methods • 5 Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome Patients (CRPS) • Image Preprocessing • Remove the pixels representing the skull • Motion correction Wolf and DetreNeurother Vol. 4, 346–359, July 2007
Methods (Cont’d) • PVE correction • Implemented an In-house written MATLAB code created by Asllani et al. [2] • Images from 5CRPS were processed using a kernel size of 5 and 9 • Kernel filter • Adjust the kernel size from to 5, 7, 9, 11 and 15 • 1 patient’s data
K = 5 Results & Discussion Significant decrease (P<0.05) in the SNR Variation in the voxels due to the noise could have prevented the code from working as intended
K = 9 Results & Discussion Inconsistent Results There is no significant difference (P>0.05) It is likely that the algorithm is not functioning as intended
Subject 5Results & Discussion Larger kernel have a greater SNR Small kernel sizes are sensitive to noise and variance
Conclusion • The SNR decreased after the PVE correction • Kernel size needs to be chosen carefully • Our in-house implementation of the PVE correction needs to be fine tuned
References • [1] Tracy, Melzer R. "Arterial Spin Labelling Reveals an Abnormal Cerebral Perfusion Pattern in Parkinson’s Disease." Brain 134.3 (2011): 845-55. • [2] Asllani, Iris, AjnaBorogovac, and Truman R. Brown. "Regression Algorithm Correcting for Partial Volume Effects in Arterial Spin Labeling MRI." Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 60.6 (2008): 1362-371. • [3] Xu, Guofan, Howard A. Rowley, Gaohong Wu, David C. Alsop, AjitShankaranarayanan, Maritza Dowling, Bradley T. Christian, Terrence R. Oakes, and Sterling C. Johnson. "Reliability and Precision of Pseudo-continuous Arterial Spin Labeling Perfusion MRI on 3.0 T and Comparison with 15O-water PET in Elderly Subjects at Risk for Alzheimer’s Disease." NMR in Biomedicine 23.3 (2010): 286-93. Print.
Thank you Questions?