High Resolution In-Utero Mapping of Fetal Brain Development from Combined MRI

描述(由申请人提供)：了解胎儿和新生儿大脑发育的正常和异常模式是早期发现发育障碍的关键因素。该项目提案寻求开发和改进新的磁共振图像重建和分析方法，以首次能够绘制宫内胎儿大脑发育的图谱。临床上对发育中的胎儿大脑的成像发现的最常见的异常之一是脑室增大，尽管没有其他临床或成像发现，但高达50%的病例与婴儿期和儿童期的神经发育障碍有关。虽然超声波可以诊断这种情况，但它无法区分那些神经结局不佳的胎儿和那些结果正常的胎儿。快速磁共振成像技术的最新发展使人们能够使用MRI来研究胎儿的解剖结构，这项技术现在正在世界各地的少数地点常规使用，包括加州大学旧金山分校。然而，胎儿大脑的磁共振成像仍然具有挑战性，因为胎儿在母亲体内运动造成的成像失真，以及周围母亲解剖造成的伪影。更高的分辨率或3D采集是不可能的，因为在所需的采集时间内胎儿会运动。目前的临床2D切片数据单独提供有限的分辨率和对比度，最重要的是，切片之间经常包含严重的运动破坏。该项目的动机是观察到有可能应用计算机视觉和图像处理技术来校正多层低分辨率胎儿切片之间的相对运动，并创建具有高各向同性3D分辨率和一致几何形状的单一体积图像。这种更高分辨率的图像提供了可以使用计算形态测量技术进行分析的结构，该技术可以检测组织体积、位置和表面折叠模式中的细微焦点差异。该项目将把这种强大的技术与加州大学旧金山分校丰富的胎儿和新生儿成像经验结合起来，允许直接临床应用该方法来研究与脑室增大相关的形态异常，并将这些与临床结果相关联。将这些计算技术应用于宫内数据的能力将为发育中的大脑提供一个全新的视角，这有望为胎儿和早产儿的早期发育问题提供新的线索。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Understanding normal and abnormal patterns of brain development in fetuses and neonates is a key factor in early detection of developmental disorders. This project proposal seeks to develop and refine novel magnetic resonance image reconstruction and analysis methodology to allow, for the first time, the mapping of in-utero fetal brain development. One of the most common abnormalities detected by clinical imaging of the developing fetal brain is ventriculomegaly, which, despite the absence of other clinical or imaging findings, is associated with neurodevelopmental disabilities in infancy and childhood in up to 50% of cases. Although ultrasound allows diagnosis of the condition, it has not been able to distinguish those fetus that will have poor neurological outcome from those with normal outcome. Recent developments in fast magnetic resonance imaging have permitted the use of MRI to study the fetal anatomy and this technique is now being routinely used at a small number of sites around the world including UCSF. However, MR imaging of the fetal brain is still challenging because of imaging distortions caused by motion of the fetus within the mother and by artifacts caused by the surrounding maternal anatomy. Higher resolution or 3D acquisitions are not possible because of motion of the fetus during the acquisition time^ required. The current clinical 2D slice data individually provide limited resolution and contrast and, most importantly, often contain severe motion corruption between slices. This project is motivated by the observation that it is possible to apply computer vision and image processing techniques to correct relative motion between the multiple stacks of low resolution fetal slices, and create a single volumetric image with high isotropic 3D resolution and consistent geometry. Such higher resolution images provide structure that may be analyzed using computational morphometric techniques that can detect subtle focal differences in the pattern of tissue volume, location and surface folding. This project will combine such powerful techniques with extensive fetal and neonatal imaging experience at UCSF, allowing direct clinical application of the methodology to study morphologic aberrations associated with ventriculomegaly and to correlate these with clinical outcome. The ability to apply these computational techniques to in-utero data will provide an entirely new view of the developing brain, which promises to shed new light on early developmental problems both in fetuses and premature neonates.