1. Evaluating multicenter DTI data in Huntington's disease on site specific effects : an ex post facto approach
- Author
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Reiner Sprengelmeyer, Jan Kassubek, James R. Cole, Raymund A.C. Roos, Georg Grön, Hans-Peter Müller, Nicola Z. Hobbs, A Duerr, Albert C. Ludolph, G. Bernhard Landwehrmeyer, Sarah J. Tabrizi, Sigurd D. Süssmuth, University of St Andrews. School of Psychology and Neuroscience, and University of St Andrews. Institute of Behavioural and Neural Sciences
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medicine.medical_specialty ,Cognitive Neuroscience ,R Medicine (General) ,behavioral disciplines and activities ,Article ,030218 nuclear medicine & medical imaging ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Physical medicine and rehabilitation ,Huntington's disease ,Neuroimaging ,Fractional anisotropy ,medicine ,Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and imaging ,business.industry ,medicine.disease ,R1 ,Multicenter study ,3. Good health ,Diffusion tensor imaging ,nervous system ,Neurology ,Spatial normalization ,Neurology (clinical) ,business ,Neuroscience ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery ,Diffusion MRI - Abstract
Purpose Assessment of the feasibility to average diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) metrics of MRI data acquired in the course of a multicenter study. Materials and methods Sixty-one early stage Huntington's disease patients and forty healthy controls were studied using four different MR scanners at four European sites with acquisition protocols as close as possible to a given standard protocol. The potential and feasibility of averaging data acquired at different sites was evaluated quantitatively by region-of-interest (ROI) based statistical comparisons of coefficients of variation (CV) across centers, as well as by testing for significant group-by-center differences on averaged fractional anisotropy (FA) values between patients and controls. In addition, a whole-brain based statistical between-group comparison was performed using FA maps. Results The ex post facto statistical evaluation of CV and FA-values in a priori defined ROIs showed no differences between sites above chance indicating that data were not systematically biased by center specific factors. Conclusion Averaging FA-maps from DTI data acquired at different study sites and different MR scanner types does not appear to be systematically biased. A suitable recipe for testing on the possibility to pool multicenter DTI data is provided to permit averaging of DTI-derived metrics to differentiate patients from healthy controls at a larger scale., Highlights ► Alternative procedure to evaluate prerequisites for multicenter DTI data pooling. ► Procedure may serve as reference for future multicenter MRI-DTI trials in HD. ► FA differences between HD and controls consistent with single center reports.
- Published
- 2013
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