Quantitative evaluation of Scout Accelerated Motion Estimation and Reduction (SAMER) MPRAGE for morphometric analysis of brain tissue in patients undergoing evaluation for memory loss.

BACKGROUND: Three-dimensional (3D) T1-weighted MRI sequences such as the magnetization prepared rapid gradient echo (MPRAGE) sequence are important for assessing regional cortical atrophy in the clinical evaluation of dementia but have long acquisition times and are prone to motion artifact. The recently developed Scout Accelerated Motion Estimation and Reduction (SAMER) retrospective motion correction method addresses motion artifact within clinically-acceptable computation times and has been validated through qualitative evaluation in inpatient and emergency settings. METHODS: We evaluated the quantitative accuracy of morphometric analysis of SAMER motion-corrected compared to non-motion-corrected MPRAGE images by estimating cortical volume and thickness across neuroanatomical regions in two subject groups: (1) healthy volunteers and (2) patients undergoing evaluation for dementia. In part (1), we used a set of 108 MPRAGE reconstructed images derived from 12 healthy volunteers to systematically assess the effectiveness of SAMER in correcting varying degrees of motion corruption, ranging from mild to severe. In part (2), 29 patients who were scheduled for brain MRI with memory loss protocol and had motion corruption on their clinical MPRAGE scans were prospectively enrolled. RESULTS: In part (1), SAMER resulted in effective correction of motion-induced cortical volume and thickness reductions. We observed systematic increases in the estimated cortical volume and thickness across all neuroanatomical regions and a relative reduction in percent error values compared to reference standard scans of up to 66 % for the cerebral white matter volume. In part (2), SAMER resulted in statistically significant volume increases across anatomical regions, with the most pronounced increases seen in the parietal and temporal lobes, and general reductions in percent error relative to reference standard clinical scans. CONCLUSION: SAMER improves the accuracy of morphometry through systematic increases and recovery of the estimated cortical volume and cortical thickness following motion correction, which may affect the evaluation of regional cortical atrophy in patients undergoing evaluation for dementia.

Motion guidance lines for robust data consistency-based retrospective motion correction in 2D and 3D MRI.

PURPOSE: To develop a robust retrospective motion-correction technique based on repeating k-space guidance lines for improving motion correction in Cartesian 2D and 3D brain MRI. METHODS: The motion guidance lines are inserted into the standard sequence orderings for 2D turbo spin echo and 3D MPRAGE to inform a data consistency-based motion estimation and reconstruction, which can be guided by a low-resolution scout. The extremely limited number of required guidance lines are repeated during each echo train and discarded in the final image reconstruction. Thus, integration within a standard k-space acquisition ordering ensures the expected image quality/contrast and motion sensitivity of that sequence. RESULTS: Through simulation and in vivo 2D multislice and 3D motion experiments, we demonstrate that respectively 2 or 4 optimized motion guidance lines per shot enables accurate motion estimation and correction. Clinically acceptable reconstruction times are achieved through fully separable on-the-fly motion optimizations (˜1 s/shot) using standard scanner GPU hardware. CONCLUSION: The addition of guidance lines to scout accelerated motion estimation facilitates robust retrospective motion correction that can be effectively introduced without perturbing standard clinical protocols and workflows.

Scout accelerated motion estimation and reduction (SAMER).

PURPOSE: To demonstrate a navigator/tracking-free retrospective motion estimation technique that facilitates clinically acceptable reconstruction time. METHODS: Scout accelerated motion estimation and reduction (SAMER) uses a single 3-5 s, low-resolution scout scan and a novel sequence reordering to independently determine motion states by minimizing the data-consistency error in a SENSE plus motion forward model. This eliminates time-consuming alternating optimization as no updates to the imaging volume are required during the motion estimation. The SAMER approach was assessed quantitatively through extensive simulation and was evaluated in vivo across multiple motion scenarios and clinical imaging contrasts. Finally, SAMER was synergistically combined with advanced encoding (Wave-CAIPI) to facilitate rapid motion-free imaging. RESULTS: The highly accelerated scout provided sufficient information to achieve accurate motion trajectory estimation (accuracy ~0.2 mm or degrees). The novel sequence reordering improved the stability of the motion parameter estimation and image reconstruction while preserving the clinical imaging contrast. Clinically acceptable computation times for the motion estimation (~4 s/shot) are demonstrated through a fully separable (non-alternating) motion search across the shots. Substantial artifact reduction was demonstrated in vivo as well as corresponding improvement in the quantitative error metric. Finally, the extension of SAMER to Wave-encoding enabled rapid high-quality imaging at up to R = 9-fold acceleration. CONCLUSION: SAMER significantly improved the computational scalability for retrospective motion estimation and correction.

Clinical validation of Wave-CAIPI susceptibility-weighted imaging for routine brain MRI at 1.5 T.

OBJECTIVES: Wave-CAIPI (Controlled Aliasing in Parallel Imaging) enables dramatic reduction in acquisition time of 3D MRI sequences such as 3D susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI) but has not been clinically evaluated at 1.5 T. We sought to compare highly accelerated Wave-CAIPI SWI (Wave-SWI) with two alternative standard sequences, conventional three-dimensional SWI and two-dimensional T2*-weighted Gradient-Echo (T2*w-GRE), in patients undergoing routine brain MRI at 1.5 T. METHODS: In this study, 172 patients undergoing 1.5 T brain MRI were scanned with a more commonly used susceptibility sequence (standard SWI or T2*w-GRE) and a highly accelerated Wave-SWI sequence. Two radiologists blinded to the acquisition technique scored each sequence for visualization of pathology, motion and signal dropout artifacts, image noise, visualization of normal anatomy (vessels and basal ganglia mineralization), and overall diagnostic quality. Superiority testing was performed to compare Wave-SWI to T2*w-GRE, and non-inferiority testing with 15% margin was performed to compare Wave-SWI to standard SWI. RESULTS: Wave-SWI performed superior in terms of visualization of pathology, signal dropout artifacts, visualization of normal anatomy, and overall image quality when compared to T2*w-GRE (all p < 0.001). Wave-SWI was non-inferior to standard SWI for visualization of normal anatomy and pathology, signal dropout artifacts, and overall image quality (all p < 0.001). Wave-SWI was superior to standard SWI for motion artifact (p < 0.001), while both conventional susceptibility sequences were superior to Wave-SWI for image noise (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Wave-SWI can be performed in a 1.5 T clinical setting with robust performance and preservation of diagnostic quality. KEY POINTS: • Wave-SWI accelerated the acquisition of 3D high-resolution susceptibility images in 70% of the acquisition time of the conventional T2*GRE. • Wave-SWI performed superior to T2*w-GRE for visualization of pathology, signal dropout artifacts, and overall diagnostic image quality. • Wave-SWI was noninferior to standard SWI for visualization of normal anatomy and pathology, signal dropout artifacts, and overall diagnostic image quality.

Iterative separation of transmit and receive phase contributions and B1(+)-based estimation of the specific absorption rate for transmit arrays.

OBJECT: The specific absorption rate (SAR) can be determined from radiofrequency transmit fields measured via magnetic resonance imaging. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The proposed method estimates the SAR solely from the complex transmit field (B1(+)) by taking into account the particular properties of the electromagnetic field generated by an 8-channel transmit array. It is further based on an iterative consistency check between the measured B1(+) magnitude and an appropriate field estimate fulfilling Maxwell's equations. For testing the method, simulations and phantom experiments were performed for a multi-transmit array at 3T using a cylindrical phantom. RESULTS: The method's robustness with respect to the assumptions made about electric tissue properties as well as its stability under different initial conditions regarding the signal phase was shown. A high sensitivity to signal noise was found. Robust reconstruction results were achieved including information from more than two transmit elements. The validity of the experimental results was confirmed by a qualitative comparison to simulated electromagnetic fields. CONCLUSIONS: The method allows the determination of the SAR as well as the transmit phase of the individual channels of a multi-transmit array. With additional B0 inhomogeneity measurements, a reconstruction of the receive phase is feasible independent of the receive coil type in use.

Deep learning-based motion quantification from k-space for fast model-based magnetic resonance imaging motion correction.

BACKGROUND: Intra-scan rigid-body motion is a costly and ubiquitous problem in clinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the head. PURPOSE: State-of-the-art methods for retrospective motion correction in MRI are often computationally expensive or in the case of image-to-image deep learning (DL) based methods can be prone to undesired alterations of the image (hallucinations'). In this work we introduce a novel rigid-body motion correction method which combines the advantages of classical model-driven and data-consistency (DC) preserving approaches with a novel DL algorithm, to provide fast and robust retrospective motion correction. METHODS: The proposed Motion Parameter Estimating Densenet (MoPED) retrospectively estimates subject head motion during MRI acquisitions using a DL network with DenseBlocks and multitask learning. It quantifies the 2D rigid in-plane motion parameters slice-wise for each echo train (ET) of a Cartesian T2-weighted 2D Turbo-Spin-Echo sequence. The network receives a center patch of the motion corrupted k-space as well as an additional motion-free low-resolution reference scan to provide the ground truth orientation. The supervised training utilizes motion simulations based on 28 acquisitions with subject-wise training, validation, and test data splits of 70%, 23%, and 7%. During inference, MoPED is embedded in an iterative DC-driven motion correction algorithm which alternatingly updates estimates of the motion parameters and motion-corrected low-resolution k-space data. The estimated motion parameters are then used to reconstruct the final motion corrected image. The mean absolute/squared error and the Pearson correlation coefficient were used to analyze the motion parameter estimation quality on in-silico data in a quantitative evaluation. Structural similarity (SSIM), DC error and root mean squared error (RMSE) were used as metrics of image quality improvement. Furthermore, the generalization capability of the network was analyzed on two in-vivo motion volumes with 28 slices each and on one simulated T1-weighted volume. RESULTS: The motion estimation achieves a Pearson correlation of 0.968 to the simulated ground-truth of the 2433 test data slices used. In-silico results indicate that MoPED decreases the time for the optimization by a factor of around 27 compared to a conventional method and is able to reduce the RMSE of the reconstructions and average DC error by more than a factor of two compared to uncorrected images. In-vivo experiments show a decrease in computation time by a factor of around 20, a RMSE decrease from 0.055 to 0.033 and an SSIM increase from 0.795 to 0.862. Furthermore, contrast independence is demonstrated as MoPED is also able to correct T1-weighted images in simulations without retraining. Due to the model-based correction, no hallucinations were observed. CONCLUSIONS: Incorporating DL in a model-based motion correction algorithm shows great benefit on the optimization and computation time. The k-space-based estimation also allows a data consistent correction and therefore avoids the risk of hallucinations of image-to-image approaches.

Optimized flow compensation for contrast-enhanced T1-weighted Wave-CAIPI 3D MPRAGE imaging of the brain.

Flow-related artifacts have been observed in highly accelerated T1-weighted contrast-enhanced wave-controlled aliasing in parallel imaging (CAIPI) magnetization-prepared rapid gradient-echo (MPRAGE) imaging and can lead to diagnostic uncertainty. We developed an optimized flow-mitigated Wave-CAIPI MPRAGE acquisition protocol to reduce these artifacts through testing in a custom-built flow phantom. In the phantom experiment, maximal flow artifact reduction was achieved with the combination of flow compensation gradients and radial reordered k-space acquisition and was included in the optimized sequence. Clinical evaluation of the optimized MPRAGE sequence was performed in 64 adult patients, who all underwent contrast-enhanced Wave-CAIPI MPRAGE imaging without flow-compensation and with optimized flow-compensation parameters. All images were evaluated for the presence of flow-related artifacts, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), gray-white matter contrast, enhancing lesion contrast, and image sharpness on a 3-point Likert scale. In the 64 cases, the optimized flow mitigation protocol reduced flow-related artifacts in 89% and 94% of the cases for raters 1 and 2, respectively. SNR, gray-white matter contrast, enhancing lesion contrast, and image sharpness were rated as equivalent for standard and flow-mitigated Wave-CAIPI MPRAGE in all subjects. The optimized flow mitigation protocol successfully reduced the presence of flow-related artifacts in the majority of cases.Relevance statementAs accelerated MRI using novel encoding schemes become increasingly adopted in clinical practice, our work highlights the need to recognize and develop strategies to minimize the presence of unexpected artifacts and reduction in image quality as potential compromises to achieving short scan times.Key points• Flow-mitigation technique led to an 89-94% decrease in flow-related artifacts.• Image quality, signal-to-noise ratio, enhancing lesion conspicuity, and image sharpness were preserved with the flow mitigation technique.• Flow mitigation reduced diagnostic uncertainty in cases where flow-related artifacts mimicked enhancing lesions.

Do You Need Embeddings Trained on a Massive Specialized Corpus for Your Clinical Natural Language Processing Task?

We explore the impact of data source on word representations for different NLP tasks in the clinical domain in French (natural language understanding and text classification). We compared word embeddings (Fasttext) and language models (ELMo), learned either on the general domain (Wikipedia) or on specialized data (electronic health records, EHR). The best results were obtained with ELMo representations learned on EHR data for one of the two tasks(+7% and +8% of gain in F1-score).

Robotic Sensing and Stimuli Provision for Guided Plant Growth.

Robot systems are actively researched for manipulation of natural plants, typically restricted to agricultural automation activities such as harvest, irrigation, and mechanical weed control. Extending this research, we introduce here a novel methodology to manipulate the directional growth of plants via their natural mechanisms for signaling and hormone distribution. An effective methodology of robotic stimuli provision can open up possibilities for new experimentation with later developmental phases in plants, or for new biotechnology applications such as shaping plants for green walls. Interaction with plants presents several robotic challenges, including short-range sensing of small and variable plant organs, and the controlled actuation of plant responses that are impacted by the environment in addition to the provided stimuli. In order to steer plant growth, we develop a group of immobile robots with sensors to detect the proximity of growing tips, and with diodes to provide light stimuli that actuate phototropism. The robots are tested with the climbing common bean, Phaseolus vulgaris, in experiments having durations up to five weeks in a controlled environment. With robots sequentially emitting blue light-peak emission at wavelength 465 nm-plant growth is successfully steered through successive binary decisions along mechanical supports to reach target positions. Growth patterns are tested in a setup up to 180 cm in height, with plant stems grown up to roughly 250 cm in cumulative length over a period of approximately seven weeks. The robots coordinate themselves and operate fully autonomously. They detect approaching plant tips by infrared proximity sensors and communicate via radio to switch between blue light stimuli and dormant status, as required. Overall, the obtained results support the effectiveness of combining robot and plant experiment methodologies, for the study of potentially complex interactions between natural and engineered autonomous systems.

Constructing living buildings: a review of relevant technologies for a novel application of biohybrid robotics.

Biohybrid robotics takes an engineering approach to the expansion and exploitation of biological behaviours for application to automated tasks. Here, we identify the construction of living buildings and infrastructure as a high-potential application domain for biohybrid robotics, and review technological advances relevant to its future development. Construction, civil infrastructure maintenance and building occupancy in the last decades have comprised a major portion of economic production, energy consumption and carbon emissions. Integrating biological organisms into automated construction tasks and permanent building components therefore has high potential for impact. Live materials can provide several advantages over standard synthetic construction materials, including self-repair of damage, increase rather than degradation of structural performance over time, resilience to corrosive environments, support of biodiversity, and mitigation of urban heat islands. Here, we review relevant technologies, which are currently disparate. They span robotics, self-organizing systems, artificial life, construction automation, structural engineering, architecture, bioengineering, biomaterials, and molecular and cellular biology. In these disciplines, developments relevant to biohybrid construction and living buildings are in the early stages, and typically are not exchanged between disciplines. We, therefore, consider this review useful to the future development of biohybrid engineering for this highly interdisciplinary application.

Autonomously shaping natural climbing plants: a bio-hybrid approach.

Plant growth is a self-organized process incorporating distributed sensing, internal communication and morphology dynamics. We develop a distributed mechatronic system that autonomously interacts with natural climbing plants, steering their behaviours to grow user-defined shapes and patterns. Investigating this bio-hybrid system paves the way towards the development of living adaptive structures and grown building components. In this new application domain, challenges include sensing, actuation and the combination of engineering methods and natural plants in the experimental set-up. By triggering behavioural responses in the plants through light spectra stimuli, we use static mechatronic nodes to grow climbing plants in a user-defined pattern at a two-dimensional plane. The experiments show successful growth over periods up to eight weeks. Results of the stimuli-guided experiments are substantially different from the control experiments. Key limitations are the number of repetitions performed and the scale of the systems tested. Recommended future research would investigate the use of similar bio-hybrids to connect construction elements and grow shapes of larger size.

Insistencia pasiva dinámica y contracción maximal: Influencia en la flexibilidad del split en kárate / Insistência passiva dinâmica e contração máxima: Influência na flexibilidade do split no Karate / Dynamic passive insistence and maximal contraction: Flexibility influence on the karate split

RESUMEN La capacidad física de flexibilidad se relaciona con las posibilidades que posee una articulación y grupo muscular en relación con un rango de un movimiento motriz determinado. La capacidad suele ser determinante en diversos deportes y de importancia vital en los karatecas. Por ello, se planteó como objetivo de la investigación comparar el método de insistencia pasiva dinámica (Mipd) y el de contracción maximal (MCM); se valoró además cómo inciden en la flexibilidad de la articulación coxofemoral en karatecas, y determinó qué método es más efectivo para incrementar la flexibilidad en el split frontal y lateral. Se realizó una investigación experimental de corte correlacional, y estudió a 36 karatecas (14-15 años, masculinos) divididos en 18 sujetos para cada grupo independiente (experimental y control). Los sujetos fueron intervenidos con un modelo idéntico de entrenamiento (cinco mesociclos), cuya diferencia radica en que al grupo control se le aplicó el Mipd y al grupo experimental el MCM. Para el grupo experimental, el test de split lateral obtuvo finalmente un valor de 6,6 cm., y el grupo de control 2.72 cm. (+3.89 cm.; p=0.002), mientras que, para el grupo experimental en el test de split frontal; se obtuvo finalmente el valor de 7.72 cm., y el grupo control 1.06 cm. (+6.66 cm; p=0.000). El Mipd incrementa el nivel de flexibilidad, pero el MCM es el idóneo para un óptimo desarrollo de la flexibilidad coxofemoral en karatekas, obteniéndose mejores progresos en la apertura de las piernas en split frontal y lateral.

RESUMO A capacidade física de flexibilidade está relacionada com as possibilidades que um grupo articular e muscular possui em relação a uma gama de um determinado movimento motor. A capacidade é normalmente determinante em vários desportos e de importância vital no Karate. Portanto, o objectivo da investigação é comparar o método da insistência passiva dinâmica (Mipd) e o método da contração máxima (MCM), avaliando como afectam a flexibilidade da articulação coxofemoral no karateca, determinando qual o método mais eficaz para aumentar a flexibilidade no split frontal e lateral. Investigação experimental de corte correlacional, estudando 36 karatecas (14-15 anos, masculino) divididas em 18 disciplinas para cada grupo independente (experimental e controlo). Os sujeitos intervieram com um modelo de treino idêntico (cinco mesociclos), sendo a diferença que o grupo de controlo recebeu o Mipd e o grupo experimental o MCM. Para o grupo experimental, o teste de divisão lateral obteve finalmente um valor de 6,6 cm, e o grupo de controlo 2,72 cm. (+3,89 cm; p=0,002), enquanto que, para o grupo experimental no teste de divisão frontal, foi finalmente obtido um valor de 7,72 cm, e o grupo de controlo 1,06 cm (+6,66 cm; p=0,002). (+6,66 cm; p=0,000). O Mipd aumenta o nível de flexibilidade, mas o MCM é o ideal para um desenvolvimento óptimo da flexibilidade coxofemoral nos karatecas, obtendo melhor progresso na abertura das pernas em split frontal e lateral.

ABSTRACT The physical capacity of flexibility is related to the possibilities possessed by a joint and muscle group in relation to a given range of motor movement. The capacity is usually determinant in various sports and of vital importance in karate athletes. Therefore, the objective of the research is to compare the dynamic passive insistence method (Mipd in Spanish) and the maximal contraction method (MCM in Spanish), assessing how they affect the flexibility of the coxofemoral joint in karate athletes, determining which method is more effective to increase flexibility in the frontal and lateral split. Experimental research of correlational type, studying 36 karate athletes (14-15 years old, male) divided into 18 subjects for each independent group (experimental and control). The subjects were intervened with an identical training model (five mesocycles), the difference being that the Mipd was applied to the control group and the MCM to the experimental group. For the experimental group, the lateral split test finally obtained a value of 6,6 cm, and the control group 2.72 cm. (+3.89 cm; p=0.002), while, for the experimental group in the frontal split test, a value of 7.72 cm was finally obtained, and the control group 1.06 cm (+6.66 cm; p=0.002). (+6.66 cm; p=0.000). The Mipd increases the level of flexibility, but the MCM is the ideal for an optimal development of coxofemoral flexibility in karate athletes, obtaining better progress in the opening of the legs in frontal and lateral split.

Direct magnetic field estimation based on echo planar raw data.

Gradient recalled echo echo planar imaging is widely used in functional magnetic resonance imaging. The fast data acquisition is, however, very sensitive to field inhomogeneities which manifest themselves as artifacts in the images. Typically used correction methods have the common deficit that the data for the correction are acquired only once at the beginning of the experiment, assuming the field inhomogeneity distribution B(0) does not change over the course of the experiment. In this paper, methods to extract the magnetic field distribution from the acquired k-space data or from the reconstructed phase image of a gradient echo planar sequence are compared and extended. A common derivation for the presented approaches provides a solid theoretical basis, enables a fair comparison and demonstrates the equivalence of the k-space and the image phase based approaches. The image phase analysis is extended here to calculate the local gradient in the readout direction and improvements are introduced to the echo shift analysis, referred to here as "k-space filtering analysis." The described methods are compared to experimentally acquired B(0) maps in phantoms and in vivo. The k-space filtering analysis presented in this work demonstrated to be the most sensitive method to detect field inhomogeneities.

Estabilidad de muestras conservadas en tubo primario: un estudio de 25 analitos de química clínica / Stability of specimens stored in primary tube: a study on 25 analytes of clinical chemistry

Se estudió la estabilidad de veinticinco analitos conservados durante siete días en dos tipos de tubos primarios: tubos de polimetilmetaacrilato (PMMA) con gránulos y tubos con gel separador, ambos con acelerador de la coagulación. El objetivo fue determinar en qué tubo los analitos tenían mayor estabilidad y como consecuencia, cuánto tiempo podían conservarse las muestras en ambos tubos. Las muestras fueron conservadas en el tubo primario a 4-8 ºC y se analizaron por duplicado diariamente durante siete días. La estabilidad de los analitos se determinó comparando los resultados de los siete días con los valores obtenidos el primer día y los límites de aceptabilidad derivaron del coeficiente de variación (CV) de cada determinación, de la variabilidad biológica (VB) intraindividual y de un análisis multivariado de varianza MANOVA. Los promedios de aldolasa, fósforo, glucosa, lactatodehidrogenasa, potasio y sodio cuando la muestra se conservó con gránulos, tuvieron diferencias estadísticamente significativas al compararlos con los promedios de los mismos analitos conservados en gel; resultados similares se obtuvieron cuando se tomó como límite de aceptabilidad el CV y la VB intraindividual. Cada laboratorio debería establecer la estabilidad de sus analitos según el tubo primario utilizado, con el objetivo de responder a no conformidades que requieran el procesamiento de analitos sobre muestras previamente extraídas en el caso de que éstas se conserven en tubo primario.

The stability of 25 analytes during a seven-day storage in two different kinds of tubes was studied. PMMA (polimetilmetaacrilate) tubes contain a clotting activator (glass particles) and the other tubes contain a gel barrier. The aim was to determine the analytes' stability in both kinds of tubes and, as a consequence, to determine the optimal time for storage of the samples in the primary tube. The specimens were maintained at 4-8 ºC and analyzed in duplicate during seven days. The analytes' stability was determined by comparing the results obtained each day with those obtained on the first day. The significant change limits were based on the determination of the variation coefficient, on the biological variation and on statistically significant changes using a MANOVA test. Mean values of aldolasa, phosphate, glucose, lactic dehydrogenase, potassium and sodium stored in tubes with a clotting activator had statistical differences in comparison with the mean values of the same analytes stored with a gel barrier. Each laboratory should investigate the specific analytes' stability according to the collection device used.