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Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can produce heterogeneous injury patterns including a variety of hemorrhagic and non-hemorrhagic lesions. The impact of lesion size, location, and interaction between total number and location of contusions may influence the occurrence of seizures after TBI. We report our methodologic approach to this question in this preliminary report of the Epilepsy Bioinformatics Study for Antiepileptogenic Therapy (EpiBioS4Rx). We describe lesion identification and segmentation of hemorrhagic contusions by early posttraumatic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We describe the preliminary methods of manual lesion segmentation in an initial cohort of 32 TBI patients from the EpiBioS4Rx cohort and the preliminary association of hemorrhagic contusion and edema location and volume to seizure incidence.

BackgroundTraumatic brain injury (TBI) causes early seizures and is the leading cause of post-traumatic epilepsy. We prospectively assessed structural imaging biomarkers differentiating patients who develop seizures secondary to TBI from patients who do not.DesignMulticentre prospective cohort study starting in 2018. Imaging data are acquired around day 14 post-injury, detection of seizure events occurred early (within 1 week) and late (up to 90 days post-TBI).ResultsFrom a sample of 96 patients surviving moderate-to-severe TBI, we performed shape analysis of local volume deficits in subcortical areas (analysable sample: 57 patients; 35 no seizure, 14 early, 8 late) and cortical ribbon thinning (analysable sample: 46 patients; 29 no seizure, 10 early, 7 late). Right hippocampal volume deficit and inferior temporal cortex thinning demonstrated a significant effect across groups. Additionally, the degree of left frontal and temporal pole thinning, and clinical score at the time of the MRI, could differentiate patients experiencing early seizures from patients not experiencing them with 89% accuracy.Conclusions and relevanceAlthough this is an initial report, these data show that specific areas of localised volume deficit, as visible on routine imaging data, are associated with the emergence of seizures after TBI.

Progress in basic and clinical research is slowed when researchers fail to provide a complete and accurate report of how a study was designed, executed, and the results analyzed. Publishing rigorous scientific research involves a full description of the methods, materials, procedures, and outcomes. Investigators may fail to provide a complete description of how their study was designed and executed because they may not know how to accurately report the information or the mechanisms are not in place to facilitate transparent reporting. Here, we provide an overview of how authors can write manuscripts in a transparent and thorough manner. We introduce a set of reporting criteria that can be used for publishing, including recommendations on reporting the experimental design and statistical approaches. We also discuss how to accurately visualize the results and provide recommendations for peer reviewers to enhance rigor and transparency. Incorporating transparency practices into research manuscripts will significantly improve the reproducibility of the results by independent laboratories. SIGNIFICANCE: Failure to replicate research findings often arises from errors in the experimental design and statistical approaches. By providing a full account of the experimental design, procedures, and statistical approaches, researchers can address the reproducibility crisis and improve the sustainability of research outcomes. In this piece, we discuss the key issues leading to irreproducibility and provide general approaches to improving transparency and rigor in reporting, which could assist in making research more reproducible.