Journal of neuroimaging : official journal of the American Society of Neuroimaging
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The central vein sign (CVS) is a diagnostic imaging biomarker for multiple sclerosis (MS). FLAIR* is a combined MRI contrast that provides high conspicuity for CVS at 3 Tesla (3T), enabling its sensitive and accurate detection in clinical settings. This study evaluated whether CVS conspicuity of 3T FLAIR* is reliable across imaging sites and MRI vendors and whether gadolinium (Gd) contrast increases CVS conspicuity. ⋯ CVS conspicuity on 3T FLAIR* is consistent across imaging sites and MRI vendors. Moreover, Gd-based contrast agent significantly improved CVS conspicuity on 3T FLAIR*. These findings support the implementation of FLAIR* in clinical settings for MS.
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Different types of physical training can lead to changes in brain activity and function, and these changes can vary depending on the type of training. However, it remains unclear whether there are commonalities in how different types of training affect brain activity and function. The purpose of this study is to compare the brain activity states of professional athletes with those of ordinary university students and to explore the relationship between training and differences in brain activity states. ⋯ The study results indicate that long-term physical training is associated with changes in brain activity in athletes, providing insights into the neural mechanisms underlying behavioral performance in professional athletes.
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Accurate and consistent lesion segmentation from magnetic resonance imaging is required for longitudinal multiple sclerosis (MS) data analysis. In this work, we propose two new transfer learning-based pipelines to improve segmentation performance for subjects in longitudinal MS datasets. ⋯ The proposed method improved lesion segmentation performance and can reduce manual effort to correct the automatic segmentations for final data analysis in longitudinal studies.
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Silent brain infarcts (SBIs), which manifest as dot-like lesions on diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) after endovascular procedures, are associated with an increased risk of stroke, dementia, and cognitive decline. We aimed to identify the factors associated with SBIs following middle cerebral artery (MCA) stenting or balloon angioplasty. ⋯ Stenosis diameter, stenosis length, and MCA tortuosity were significantly associated with the development of SBIs following MCA stenting.
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Despite multimodal treatment of glioblastoma (GBM), recurrence beyond the initial tumor volume is inevitable. Moreover, conventional MRI has shortcomings that hinder the early detection of occult white matter tract infiltration by tumor, but diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is a sensitive probe for assessing microstructural changes, facilitating the identification of progression before standard imaging. This sensitivity makes DTI a valuable tool for predicting recurrence. A systematic review was therefore conducted to investigate how DTI, in comparison to conventional MRI, can be used for predicting GBM progression. ⋯ These findings suggest that DTI metrics may be useful for guiding surgical and radiotherapy planning for GBM patients, and for informing long-term surveillance. Understanding the current state of the literature pertaining to these metrics' trends is crucial, particularly as DTI is increasingly used as a treatment-guiding imaging modality.