The Canadian Dementia Imaging Protocol: Harmonization validity for morphometry measurements.

Olivier Potvin,D Louis Collins,Simon Duchesne,Stephen C Strother,Christopher J.M Scott,Robert Bartha,Louis Dieumegarde,Sandra E Black,Maxime Descoteaux,Pierre Bellec,Isabelle Chouinard,Eric E Smith,Rick Hoge,Joel Ramirez

doi:10.1016/j.nicl.2019.101943

Abstract

The harmonized Canadian Dementia Imaging Protocol (CDIP) has been developed to suit the needs of a number of co-occurring Canadian studies collecting data on brain changes across adulthood and neurodegeneration. In this study, we verify the impact of CDIP parameters compliance on total brain volume variance using 86 scans of the same individual acquired on various scanners. Data included planned data collection acquired within the Consortium pour l'identification précoce de la maladie Alzheimer - Québec (CIMA-Q) and Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA) studies, as well as opportunistic data collection from various protocols. For images acquired from Philips scanners, lower variance in brain volumes were observed when the stated CDIP resolution was set. For images acquired from GE scanners, lower variance in brain volumes were noticed when TE/TR values were within 5% of the CDIP protocol, compared to values farther from that criteria. Together, these results suggest that a harmonized protocol like the CDIP may help to reduce neuromorphometric measurement variability in multi-centric studies.

Highlights

Quantitative methods to extract specific and sensitive biomarkers from neuroimages(Frisoni et al, 2013) can be shared to ensure that similar post-acquisition processing is performed in a standardized fashion
Several organizations and projects have contributed to the elaboration of the Canadian Dementia Imaging Protocol (CDIP) protocol and the acquisition of SIMON data, namely the Canadian Alliance for Healthy Hearts and Minds (Anand et al, 2016)(cahhm.mcmaster.ca); the Consortium pour l'identification précoce de la maladie d'Alzheimer – Québec (CIMA-Q)(www.cima-q.ca); the O2 study from the Consortium Québécois sur la Découverte du Médicament; the Medical Imaging Trials Network of Canada – C6; and the Ontario Brain Institute's Ontario Neurodegenerative Disease Research Initiative (Farhan et al, 2017)(ondri.ca)
Five images from Phillips Medical Systems (Philips) scanners had no TE and TR values in the image headers, and these images were only used for resolution analyses

Summary

Introduction

Quantitative methods to extract specific and sensitive biomarkers from neuroimages (e.g. algorithms, software)(Frisoni et al, 2013) can be shared to ensure that similar post-acquisition processing is performed in a standardized fashion. There will be a large variance in the data from laboratory to laboratory if one does not standardize beforehand the process of acquiring the imaging data This is especially true of longitudinal, multi-centric settings where the wide array of models and vendors, on top of configuration changes throughout the life cycle of these scanners, significantly affects performance and data quality. To counteract these effects, several initiatives have developed standard operating procedures to minimize variability in neuroimage acquisition. It has proposed comprehensive cognitive, behavioural, and especially neuroimaging procedures that have been harmonized and implemented across > 55 sites in Canada and the U.S (Jack Jr. et al, 2008)

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