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Segmenting white matter hyperintensities on isotropic three-dimensional Fluid Attenuated Inversion Recovery magnetic resonance images: Assessing deep learning tools on a Norwegian imaging database

Røvang, MS; Selnes, P; MacIntosh, BJ; Rasmus Groote, I; Pålhaugen, L; Sudre, C; Fladby, T; (2023) Segmenting white matter hyperintensities on isotropic three-dimensional Fluid Attenuated Inversion Recovery magnetic resonance images: Assessing deep learning tools on a Norwegian imaging database. PloS one , 18 (8) , Article e0285683. 10.1371/journal.pone.0285683. Green open access

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Abstract

An important step in the analysis of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data for neuroimaging is the automated segmentation of white matter hyperintensities (WMHs). Fluid Attenuated Inversion Recovery (FLAIR-weighted) is an MRI contrast that is particularly useful to visualize and quantify WMHs, a hallmark of cerebral small vessel disease and Alzheimer's disease (AD). In order to achieve high spatial resolution in each of the three voxel dimensions, clinical MRI protocols are evolving to a three-dimensional (3D) FLAIR-weighted acquisition. The current study details the deployment of deep learning tools to enable automated WMH segmentation and characterization from 3D FLAIR-weighted images acquired as part of a national AD imaging initiative. Based on data from the ongoing Norwegian Disease Dementia Initiation (DDI) multicenter study, two 3D models-one off-the-shelf from the NVIDIA nnU-Net framework and the other internally developed-were trained, validated, and tested. A third cutting-edge Deep Bayesian network model (HyperMapp3r) was implemented without any de-novo tuning to serve as a comparison architecture. The 2.5D in-house developed and 3D nnU-Net models were trained and validated in-house across five national collection sites among 441 participants from the DDI study, of whom 194 were men and whose average age was (64.91 +/- 9.32) years. Both an external dataset with 29 cases from a global collaborator and a held-out subset of the internal data from the 441 participants were used to test all three models. These test sets were evaluated independently. The ground truth human-in-the-loop segmentation was compared against five established WMH performance metrics. The 3D nnU-Net had the highest performance out of the three tested networks, outperforming both the internally developed 2.5D model and the SOTA Deep Bayesian network with an average dice similarity coefficient score of 0.76 +/- 0.16. Our findings demonstrate that WMH segmentation models can achieve high performance when trained exclusively on FLAIR input volumes that are 3D volumetric acquisitions. Single image input models are desirable for ease of deployment, as reflected in the current embedded clinical research project. The 3D nnU-Net had the highest performance, which suggests a way forward for our need to automate WMH segmentation while also evaluating performance metrics during on-going data collection and model retraining.

Type: Article
Title: Segmenting white matter hyperintensities on isotropic three-dimensional Fluid Attenuated Inversion Recovery magnetic resonance images: Assessing deep learning tools on a Norwegian imaging database
Location: United States
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0285683
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285683
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright: © 2023 Røvang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Keywords: Male, Humans, Middle Aged, Aged, Female, Bayes Theorem, Deep Learning, White Matter, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Neuroimaging, Leukoaraiosis, Alzheimer Disease
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Cardiovascular Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Cardiovascular Science > Population Science and Experimental Medicine
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Cardiovascular Science > Population Science and Experimental Medicine > MRC Unit for Lifelong Hlth and Ageing
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10176207
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