Taking advanced diffusion imaging to the clinic for pediatric patients with ADHD

描述(申请人提供)：在这项拨款申请中，我们建议开发临床上可行的方法来获取和分析儿童患者的高级扩散磁共振成像(DMRI)，并将其应用于研究注意缺陷多动障碍(ADHD)的微观和宏观水平的病理。先进的dMRI技术可以提供大脑中白质路径布局的详细信息，这是目前的扩散张量成像(DTI)临床标准无法实现的。然而，这些高级协议需要较长的扫描时间，在这段时间内的任何运动都会导致伪影和信号丢失。因此，儿童的dMRI获得成为一项具有挑战性的任务，特别是如果他们是多动症(如ADHD)。在这种授权应用中，我们提出了几种新的算法，用于高级dMRI协议的快速获取和重建。特别是，我们将使用我们的多切片采集协议(与标准的单切片采集相反)以及 从极少的测量中恢复dMRI信号的方案。这将极大地减少扫描时间，并使(在临床上)获得儿科患者的高级dMRI扫描成为可能。我们将在几个测试对象上验证我们的方法，然后将它们应用到患有ADHD的儿童和青少年的研究中。特别是，我们将分析ADHD解剖神经网络的全局连通性特性，以及可能因病理而受到影响的基于局部扩散的微结构特性。因此，这项建议中建议的改进将为临床带来先进的dMRI方案，并使我们能够量化任何类型的精神或神经疾病患者的微观和宏观水平的异常。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In this grant application, we propose to develop clinicaly feasible methods for the acquisition and analysis of advanced diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) of pediatric patients and apply it to study micro and macro level pathology in attention-deficit hyperactivity-disorder (ADHD). Advanced dMRI techniques can provide details about the layout of white matter pathways in the brain, that are not possible using the current clinical standard of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). However, these advanced protocols require long scan times and any motion during this time results in artifacts and loss of signal. As a result, dMRI acquisition of children becomes a challenging task, particularly if they are hyperactive (as in ADHD). In this grant application, we propose several novel algorithms for fast acquisition and reconstruction of advanced dMRI protocols. In particular, we will use our multi-slice acquisition protocol (as opposed to the standard single-slice acquisition) along with a scheme to recover dMRI signals from very few measurements. This will dramatically reduce scan time and make it possible to obtain advanced dMRI scans of pediatric patients (in a clinic). We will validate our methods on several test subjects and then apply them to the study of children and adolescents with ADHD. In particular, we will analyze global connectivity properties of the anatomical neural networks in ADHD along with local diffusion based microstructural properties that may be affected due to pathology. Thus, the improvements suggested in this proposal will bring advanced dMRI protocols to the clinic and allow us to quantify micro and macro level abnormalities in patients with any type of psychiatric or neurological disorder.