Mathilde Ripart¹, Hannah Spitzer², Russell Shinohara³, MELD Consortium⁴, Torsten Baldeweg¹, Sophie Adler¹, and Konrad Wagstyl^5
1Great Ormond Street Institute for Child Health, UCL, London, United Kingdom, ²Institute of Computational Biology, Helmholtz Zentrum München, Munich, Germany, ³Penn Statistics in Imaging and Visualization Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States, ⁴UCL, London, United Kingdom, ⁵Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, UCL, London, United Kingdom

The Multi-centre Epilepsy Lesion Detection (MELD) project presents a methodology to harmonise a large heterogenous cohort of surface-based MRI data. Structural features were extracted from T1w and FLAIR images and pre-processed to reduce systematic site, scanner, and age-specific biases. The harmonised dataset enabled the characterisation of subtle radiological markers of focal cortical dysplasia (FCD), a cortical abnormality causing drug-resistant epilepsy. Machine-learning algorithms trained on the harmonised dataset improved the classification of FCD histopathologies. With open-source protocols and code, the MELD preprocessing pipeline offers a reproducible method to prepare large heterogeneous datasets for statistical analysis and machine-learning tasks. 

Tie-Qiang Li¹, Klas Nordlind², Elvar Theodorsson³, and Tomas Jonsson^4
1Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, ²Division of Dermatology and Venereology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, ³Department of Biomedical and Clinical Science, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden, ⁴CLINTEC, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

A cohort of 32 atopic dermatitis (AD) patients and 32 matched healthy controls (HC) were recruited to study the neurological abnormalities which might be associated with this pruritic skin condition. The main findings are 1) reduced general functional connectivity in the precuneus, inferior parietal lobe and visual cortex was detected in females AD patients; 2) Severity of the symptoms was negatively correlated with functional connectivity in inferior parietal lobe, while salivary cortisol was positively associated. Resting-state fMRI can provide useful insight into the altered neurophysiology and clinically relevant assessment for the AD disorder.

Dahmane Boudries¹, Jean-Michel Franconi¹, Sylvain R.A Marque², Philippe Massot¹, Philippe Mellet³, Elodie Parzy¹, and Eric Thiaudiere^1
1CNRS, Bordeaux, France, ²CNRS, Marseille, France, ³INSERM, Bordeaux, France

Earth-field MRI can provide new contrasts leading to the observation of pathologies at the biochemical level. However detection sensitivity is poor at low-field. In a preliminary spectroscopic approach, it is proposed here to detect protease-driven hydrolysis of a nitroxide probe thanks to electron-nucleus Overhauser enhancement in a homemade double resonance system. The nitroxide probe is a six-line nitroxide whose lines are shifted according to its substrate/product state. The Overhauser enhancement frequency dependence was in agreement with theoretical calculations. Enzymatic conversion of the nitroxide substrate was observed which opens the way for the design of new low-field DNP-MRI systems.

Leonie Petitclerc^1,2,3, Lydiane Hirschler^1,3, Iris Asllani^4,5, and Matthias J.P. van Osch^1,2,3
1C.J. Gorter Center for High Field MRI, Department of Radiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands, ²Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC), Leiden, Netherlands, ³Department of Radiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands, ⁴Clinical Imaging Science Center, University of Sussex, Sussex, United Kingdom, ⁵Biomedical Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, United States

Partial volume correction in ASL typically neglects CSF signal, however we have recently shown that some labeled signal crosses the blood-CSF barrier at a measurable level. Here we show the effect of including CSF in PVC, in simulated and in-vivo data. CSF-PVC reduced error on GM perfusion by ~10% in simulated data, with higher error when more CSF is present (including at longer LD and PLD). The difference between CSF-PVC and non-CSF-PVC GM signal in vivo was also ~10%. Comparing PVC signal in CSF to long-TE ASL signal suggests that BCSFB characterization may be possible without the acquisition of ultra-long-TE.

Lily Xiang¹, Lucy Victoria Hiscox², Curtis L. Johnson³, and Neil Roberts^1
1University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, ²University of Bath, Bath, United Kingdom, ³University of Delaware, Newark, DE, United States

On average the human brain has a global structural asymmetry comprising a counter-clockwise twist in the transverse plane and which is referred to as the cerebral torque. We have investigated whether there is a relationship between the magnitude of the torque and measures of brain shear stiffness obtained using Magnetic Resonance Elastography (MRE) in a group of Older Adults (AD) and a group of patients with Alzheimers DIsease (AD).

Joanna Chappell¹, Nada Mufti^1,2, Patrick O'Brien³, George Attilakos³, Magda Sokolska⁴, Priya Narayanan², Rosalind Aughwane^2,3, Giles Kendall^2,3, David Atkinson⁵, Sebastien Ourselin ¹, Anna L David^2,3,6, and Andrew Melbourne^1,4
1School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences (BMEIS), Kings College London, London, United Kingdom, ²Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Institute for Women's Health, University College London, London, United Kingdom, ³Women's Health Division, University College London, London, United Kingdom, ⁴Depart. Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, University College London, London, United Kingdom, ⁵Centre for Medical Imaging, University College London, London, United Kingdom, ⁶WEISS (Wellcome /EPSRC Centre for Medical Imaging, University College London, London, United Kingdom

Magnetic Resonance Imaging is increasingly used for assessment of placental complications¹. Here we apply MRI to examine Placenta Accreta Spectrum (PAS) a condition where the placenta is abnormally adherent or invasive. Super-Resolution Reconstruction (SRR) provides a high-resolution 3D reconstruction from 2D MRI slices to improve the visibility of structures for future clinical use². Image Quality metrics allows quantitative evaluation of the SRR images to compare with the original 2D images. These metrics are found to be statistical significant, providing an objective assessment of the SRR images.

Jing Cui^1,2 and Zhongliang Zu^1,2
1Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science, Nashville, TN, United States, ²Department of Radiology and Radiological Sciences, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, United States

Nuclear overhauser enhancement (NOE) mediated chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) effect at -3.5 ppm has shown clinical interests in diagnosing tumors. Asymmetric analysis is a fast and simple method to measure and quantify the NOE effect, but has contamination from the downfield amide proton transfer (APT) effect at 3.5 ppm. In this abstract, we provide a new NOE quantification method using asymmetric analysis of CEST signals acquired with 2pi saturation pulses (2pi-CEST) which is also fast but has reduced contamination from the APT effect.

Christian Waldenberg^1,2, Stefanie Eriksson^1,2, Hanna Hebelka^1,2, Helena Brisby^1,2, and Kerstin Lagerstrand^1,2
1University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden, ²Institute of Clinical Sciences, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

Texture analysis combined with attention mapping has the potential to identify the position of pathology normally not visible in MR images by exploiting inter-pixel relationships in magnetic resonance (MR) images. However, as pathology can influence adjacent tissue, the features used to identify the position of the pathology have to be selected with care. Here we present an easily implemented method that efficiently selects texture features that are only sensitive to the pathology and can improve the localization of pathology even when not visible in MR images.