Stability of MRI metrics in the advanced research core of the NCAA-DoD concussion assessment, research and education (CARE) consortium. Brain Imaging Behav 2018 Aug;12(4):1121-1140
Date
10/25/2017Pubmed ID
29064019Pubmed Central ID
PMC6445663DOI
10.1007/s11682-017-9775-yScopus ID
2-s2.0-85032009818 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site) 21 CitationsAbstract
The NCAA-DoD Concussion Assessment, Research, and Education (CARE) consortium is performing a large-scale, comprehensive study of sport related concussions in college student-athletes and military service academy cadets. The CARE "Advanced Research Core" (ARC), is focused on executing a cutting-edge investigative protocol on a subset of the overall CARE athlete population. Here, we present the details of the CARE ARC MRI acquisition and processing protocol along with preliminary analyzes of within-subject, between-site, and between-subject stability across a variety of MRI biomarkers. Two experimental datasets were utilized for this analysis. First, two "human phantom" subjects were imaged multiple times at each of the four CARE ARC imaging sites, which utilize equipment from two imaging vendors. Additionally, a control cohort of healthy athletes participating in non-contact sports were enrolled in the study at each CARE ARC site and imaged at four time points. Multiple morphological image contrasts were acquired in each MRI exam; along with quantitative diffusion, functional, perfusion, and relaxometry imaging metrics. As expected, the imaging markers were found to have varying levels of stability throughout the brain. Importantly, between-subject variance was generally found to be greater than within-subject and between-site variance. These results lend support to the expectation that cross-site and cross-vendor advanced quantitative MRI metrics can be utilized to improve analytic power in assessing sensitive neurological variations; such as those effects hypothesized to occur in sports-related-concussion. This stability analysis provides a crucial foundation for further work utilizing this expansive dataset, which will ultimately be freely available through the Federal Interagency Traumatic Brain Injury Research Informatics System.
Author List
Nencka AS, Meier TB, Wang Y, Muftuler LT, Wu YC, Saykin AJ, Harezlak J, Brooks MA, Giza CC, Difiori J, Guskiewicz KM, Mihalik JP, LaConte SM, Duma SM, Broglio S, McAllister T, McCrea MA, Koch KMAuthors
Kevin M. Koch PhD Center Director, Professor in the Radiology department at Medical College of WisconsinMichael McCrea PhD Professor in the Neurosurgery department at Medical College of Wisconsin
Timothy B. Meier PhD Associate Professor in the Neurosurgery department at Medical College of Wisconsin
Lutfi Tugan Muftuler PhD Professor in the Neurosurgery department at Medical College of Wisconsin
Andrew S. Nencka PhD Director, Associate Professor in the Radiology department at Medical College of Wisconsin
Yang Wang MD Professor in the Radiology department at Medical College of Wisconsin
MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold
Athletic InjuriesBrain
Brain Concussion
Female
Humans
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
Longitudinal Studies
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Military Personnel
Preliminary Data
Reproducibility of Results
Rest
Software
Students
Universities