Murphy, Keelin; van der Aa, Niek E.; Negro, Simona; Groenendaal, Floris; de Vries, Linda S.; Viergever, Max A.; Boylan, Geraldine B.; Benders, Manon J. N. L.; Išgum, Ivana

2017

January

Neuroimage: Clinical

Automatic quantification of ischemic injury on diffusion-weighted MRI of neonatal hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy

Published

Altmetric: 1 ()

Automatic quantification HIE MRI Diffusion-weighted lesions Segmentation Neonatal hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy

14

222

232

A fully automatic method for detection and quantification of ischemic lesions in diffusion-weighted MR images of neonatal hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) is presented. Ischemic lesions are manually segmented by two independent observers in 1.5 T data from 20 subjects and an automatic algorithm using a random forest classifier is developed and trained on the annotations of observer 1. The algorithm obtains a median sensitivity and specificity of 0.72 and 0.99 respectively. F1-scores are calculated per subject for algorithm performance (median = 0.52) and observer 2 performance (median = 0.56). A paired t-test on the F1-scores shows no statistical difference between the algorithm and observer 2 performances. The method is applied to a larger dataset including 54 additional subjects scanned at both 1.5 T and 3.0 T. The algorithm findings are shown to correspond well with the injury pattern noted by clinicians in both 1.5 T and 3.0 T data and to have a strong relationship with outcome. The results of the automatic method are condensed to a single score for each subject which has significant correlation with an MR score assigned by experienced clinicians (p < 0.0001). This work represents a quantitative method of evaluating diffusion-weighted MR images in neonatal HIE and a first step in the development of an automatic system for more in-depth analysis and prognostication.

2213-1582

10.1016/j.nicl.2017.01.005

Science Foundation Ireland

10/IN.1/B3036 and 12/RC/2272