Accelerated Magnetic Resonance Elastography for Brain Stiffness Analysis in Children with Classic Autistic Disorder

项目摘要 该项目包括开发先进的MRI序列来研究大脑僵硬，以及 这项技术在自闭症儿童脑健康研究中的临床应用。目前每88名儿童中就有1名 美国被诊断出患有自闭症。自闭症的特点是经常出现身体和神经缺陷。 包括局部脑体积的变化。这表明自闭症可能会影响大脑发育。 并对其临床和行为表现做出贡献。然而，自闭症的因果关系在很大程度上是未知的。 诊断自闭症，评估严重程度，并为康复提供量化指标是具有挑战性的。 对自闭症患者大脑健康的调查一直很有限，就像体内微结构的评估一样。 在这样的人群中，房地产是具有挑战性的。一种技术是磁共振弹性成像(MRE)， 这是第一种非侵入性、灵敏、可重复的神经成像技术，能够产生机械的 用于评估大脑微结构健康的属性测量。大脑机械特性受以下因素影响 神经退行性疾病，以及最近，脑瘫儿童的全球脑完整性缺陷 观察到的。MRE测量对大脑健康方面的微小个体差异都很敏感，这些差异与 认知功能、有氧适应能力或对干预的反应，因此，脑组织粘弹性， 通过MRE测量，可以量化神经组织微结构如何影响社会、语言和 自闭症儿童的发育迟缓。然而，自闭症儿童的大脑僵硬从来没有 已经在体内进行了研究。本研究的目的是利用磁共振成像技术研究自闭症儿童的脑健康状况。 并了解这些大脑机械特性是如何与认知等功能指标相关的 技能、语言技能和行为。实现这一目标将提供一个诊断和 对这群人的干预。然而，MRE是一种固有的长时间MRI技术，它需要受试者 在狭小的空间中长时间静止不动，这使得在以下位置执行扫描非常困难 残疾儿童。我们准备实施更快的扫描时间，以最佳方式定制我们的MRE收购 对于患有自闭症的儿童。由于需要随着时间的推移捕捉多个方向的组织变形，MRE 是高度时空冗余的，并且可以被建模为用于加速成像的低阶问题。去做 为此，我们将设计一种时空数据欠采样技术，称为振荡，并将k空间数据 将通过跨所有采样时间点的低阶联合图像重建进行重建。成功后 完成这个项目后，我们将量化典型自闭症受试者的大脑机械差异 为疾病的诊断和干预提供依据。我们将建立一种新的协议来实现更快的MRE 用于研究任何具有非典型神经发育的儿童。我们队正处于无与伦比的 设施位置、研究联系人、MRE技术开发经验和儿科MRE经验 进行这项研究。

Project Summary This project includes both development of advanced MRI sequences to study brain stiffness as well as a clinical application of this technique to study brain health in children with autism. Currently 1 in 88 children in the United States are diagnosed with autism. Autism is characterized by physical and neurological deficits often including changes in regional brain volume. This indicates that brain development may be affected by autism and contributes to its clinical and behavioral expression. However, autism causality is largely unknown making it challenging to diagnose autism, assess severity, and provide quantitative metrics for rehabilitation. Investigation of brain health in people with autism has been limited, as in vivo assessments of microstructural properties are challenging in such a population. One technique is magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), which is the first noninvasive, sensitive, repeatable neuroimaging technique capable of generating mechanical property measurements for assessing brain microstructural health. Brain mechanical properties are affected by neurodegenerative disease, and recently, global brain integrity deficits in children with cerebral palsy have been observed. MRE measures are sensitive to even subtle individual differences in brain health, that relate to cognitive function, aerobic fitness or response to intervention and therefore, brain tissue viscoelasticity, measured with MRE, can quantify how neural tissue microstructure affects the social, linguistic, and developmental delays seen in children with autism. Brain stiffness in children with autism, however, has never been studied in vivo. The objective of this research is to use MRE to study brain health in children with autism and to understand how these brain mechanical properties are related to functional measures such as cognitive skills, linguistic skills, and behavior. Accomplishing this goal will provide a framework for diagnosis and intervention in this population. However, MRE is an inherently long MRI technique, and it requires a subject to lay still for an extended period of time in a small space, which makes it very challenging to perform this scan in children with disabilities. We are prepared to implement faster scan times to optimally tailor our MRE acquisition toward children with autism. Due to the need to capture tissue deformation in multiple directions over time, MRE is highly spatiotemporally redundant, and can be modeled as a low rank problem for accelerated imaging. To do this we will design a spatiotemporal data under-sampling technique, called OSCILLATE, and the k-space data will be reconstructed with a low rank joint image reconstruction across all sampled time points. Upon successful completion of this project we will have quantified brain mechanical differences in subjects with classic autistic disorder to provide basis for diagnosis and intervention. We will have established a novel protocol for faster MRE acquisition for use in studying any child with atypical neurological development. Our team is in an unparalleled position of facilities, research contacts, MRE technical development experience and pediatric MRE experience to carry out this research.