Falk Lüsebrink

Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen | DZNE · iNET

Subject motion in MRI is a relevant problem in the daily clinical routine as well as in scientific studies. Since the beginning of clinical use of MRI, many research groups have developed methods to suppress or correct motion artefacts. This review focuses on rigid body motion correction of head and brain MRI and its application in diagnosis and re...

We present an ultrahigh resolution in vivo human brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) dataset. It consists of T1-weighted whole brain anatomical data acquired at 7 Tesla with a nominal isotropic resolution of 250 μm of a single young healthy Caucasian subject and was recorded using prospective motion correction. The raw data amounts to approximat...

Denosing of MR data during image reconstruction in complex domain prior to channel combination gives better results compared to denoising magnitude images after reconstruction. In this study we compare 'BM4D' with two settings and the pre-trained neural network 'DnCNN'. The reconstruction pipeline is shared on Github.

Here, we present an extension to our previously published structural ultrahigh resolution T 1 -weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) dataset with an isotropic resolution of 250 µm, consisting of multiple additional ultrahigh resolution contrasts. Included are up to 150 µm Time-of-Flight angiography, an updated 250 µm structural T 1 -weighted re...

At high spatial resolution, unintentional motion due to breathing or slow head drifts is of the same order as the voxel size. Further, higher resolution is prolonging scan sessions, rendering subject motion more likely. Thus, even in compliant subjects, unintentional and physiological motion can induce motion artifacts. Motion compensation or corre...

This study introduces the Structural MRI based Alzheimer's Disease Score (SMAS), a novel index intended to quantify Alzheimer's Disease (AD) related morphometric patterns using a deep learning Bayesian supervised Variational Autoencoder (Bayesian sVAE). SMAS index was constructed using baseline structural MRI data from the DELCODE study and evaluat...

Background Perivascular space (PVS) enlargement in ageing and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and the drivers of such a structural change in humans require longitudinal investigation. Elucidating the effects of demographic factors, hypertension, cerebrovascular dysfunction, and AD pathology on PVS dynamics could inform the role of PVS in brain health func...

Background For over three decades, the concomitance of cortical neurodegeneration and white matter hyperintensities (WMH) has sparked discussions about their coupled temporal dynamics. Longitudinal studies supporting this hypothesis nonetheless remain scarce. Methods We applied global and regional bivariate latent growth curve modelling to determi...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a major cause of dementia and cognitive decline. Here we assessed how episodic memory circuit dysfunction, a hallmark of AD, is related to the longitudinal cascade of AD biomarkers, neurodegeneration and cognition using data from the DZNE Longitudinal Cognitive Impairment and Dementia study. This data set is unique by in...

Individuals with Alzheimer′s disease dementia postmortem show Alzheimer′s disease pathology in and heterogeneous degeneration of the Substantia Nigra (SN). However, it is unclear how the SN degeneration is related to cognitive dysfunction across the Alzheimer′s disease dementia continuum. In this study, using data from a prospective dementia study...

INTRODUCTION: The Locus Coeruleus (LC) is linked to the development and pathophysiology of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Magnetic Resonance Imaging based LC features have shown potential to assess LC integrity in vivo. METHODS: We present a Deep Learning based LC segmentation and feature extraction method: ELSI-Net an...

In functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, episodic memory is commonly investigated with the subsequent memory paradigm in which brain activity is recorded during encoding and analyzed as a function of subsequent remembering and forgetting. Impaired episodic memory is common in individuals with or at risk for Alzheimer’s disease (AD),...

Background For over three decades, the concomitance of cortical neurodegeneration and white matter hyperintensities (WMH) has sparked discussions about their coupled temporal dynamics. Longitudinal studies supporting this hypothesis remain nonetheless scarce. Methods In this study, we applied regional and global bivariate latent growth curve modell...

Introduction: Subjective cognitive decline (SCD) is proposed to indicate transitional stage-2 in the AD continuum, yet longitudinal fluid biomarker data for this stage is scarce. We investigated if blood-based biomarkers in amyloid-positive individuals with SCD (A+SCD) support stage-2 as distinct from AD stages-1 and -3 and identify those at high r...

The locus coeruleus (LC), our main source of norepinephrine (NE) in the brain, declines with age and is a potential epicentre of protein pathologies in neurodegenerative diseases (ND). In vivo measurements of LC integrity and function are potentially important biomarkers for healthy ageing and early ND onset. In the present study, high-resolution f...

In functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, episodic memory is commonly investigated with the subsequent memory paradigm in which brain activity is recorded during encoding and analyzed as a function of subsequent remembering and forgetting. Impaired episodic memory is common in individuals with or at risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD),...

Single-value scores reflecting the deviation from (FADE score) or similarity with (SAME score) prototypical novelty-related and memory-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) activation patterns in young adults have been proposed as imaging biomarkers of healthy neurocognitive aging. Here, we tested the utility of these scores as poten...

Background Participation in multimodal leisure activities, such as playing a musical instrument, may be protective against brain aging and dementia in older adults (OA). Potential neuroprotective correlates underlying musical activity remain unclear. Objective This cross-sectional study investigated the association between lifetime musical activit...

Inferior frontal sulcal hyperintensities (IFSHs) on fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) sequences have been proposed to be indicative of glymphatic dysfunction. Replication studies in large and diverse samples are nonetheless needed to confirm them as an imaging biomarker. We investigated whether IFSHs were tied to Alzheimer’s disease (AD)...

Memory clinic patients are a heterogeneous population representing various aetiologies of pathological aging. It is unknown if divergent spatiotemporal progression patterns of brain atrophy, as previously described in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients, are prevalent and clinically meaningful in this group of older adults. To uncover distinct atrop...

Research on the impairment of episodic memory in Alzheimer's disease often focuses on the processes of memory rather than the content of the specific images being remembered. We recently showed that patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), Stage 3 of Alzheimer's disease, can memorize certain images quite well, suggesting that episodic memory...

Single-value scores reflecting the deviation from (FADE score) or similarity with (SAME score) prototypical novelty-related and memory-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) activation patterns in young adults have been proposed as imaging biomarkers of healthy neurocognitive aging. Here, we tested the utility of these scores as poten...

Background: Perivascular space (PVS) enlargement in ageing and Alzheimer's disease (AD) and its exacerbators require further investigation. Methods: We studied centrum semiovale (CSO) and basal ganglia (BG) PVS computationally over three to four annual visits in 557 participants of the DZNE multicentre DELCODE cohort. We tested volumetric changes o...

The noradrenergic locus coeruleus (LC) is one of the protein pathology epicenters in neurodegenerative diseases. In contrast to PET (positron emission tomography), MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) offers the spatial resolution necessary to investigate the 3-4 mm wide and 1.5 cm long LC. However, standard data postprocessing is often too spatially i...

Background The noradrenergic locus coeruleus (LC) in the brainstem shows earliest signs of protein pathologies in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Its small size (about 3‐4mm in width and 15 mm in length) makes it less suitable for Positron Emission Tomography (PET) investigations, so the past decade has seen...

The noradrenergic locus coeruleus (LC) in the brainstem shows early signs of protein pathologies in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. As the LC’s small size (approximately 2.5 mm in width) presents a challenge for molecular imaging, the past decade has seen a steep rise in structural and functional Magnetic Res...

Primary visual cortex (V1) in humans is known to represent both veridically perceived external input and internally-generated contents underlying imagery and mental rotation. However, it is unknown how the brain keeps these contents separate thus avoiding a mixture of the perceived and the imagined which could lead to potentially detrimental conseq...

Here, we present an extension to our previously published structural ultrahigh resolution T1- weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) dataset with an isotropic resolution of 250 µm, consisting of multiple additional ultrahigh resolution contrasts. Included are up to 150 µm Time-of-Flight angiography, an updated 250 µm structural T1-weighted recon...

Here, we present an extension to our previously published structural ultrahigh resolution T1- weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) dataset with an isotropic resolution of 250 µm, consisting of multiple additional ultrahigh resolution contrasts. Included are up to 150 µm Time-of-Flight angiography, an updated 250 µm structural T1-weighted recon...

Primary visual cortex (V1) in humans is known to represent both veridically perceived external input and internally-generated contents underlying imagery and mental rotation. However, it is unknown how the brain keeps these contents separate thus avoiding a mixture of the perceived and the imagined which could lead to potentially detrimental conseq...

Background The locus coeruleus‐norepinephrine system (LC‐NE system) supports the process of encoding of emotionally salient events. LC integrity varies in healthy elderly and is associated with altered cognitive functions in aging. Post‐mortem as well as structural indicators suggest that the modulation of the LC‐NE system is reduced in elderly. Th...

Background Postmortem studies show that the locus coeruleus (LC), the major source of cortical noradrenergic projections, exhibits evidence of neurodegeneration early in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Indeed, the noradrenergic system is more affected than the dopaminergic or cholinergic ones. Albeit to a smaller extent, neuronal loss in the LC is also s...

Following the DOI, you can download the entire dataset: https://doi.org/10.24352/UB.OVGU-2020-145 Here, we present an extension to our previously published structural ultrahigh isotropic resolution T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) dataset, consisting of multiple additional high quality contrasts. Included are up to 150 μm Time-of-Fligh...

Purpose Publicly available data provision is an essential part of open science. However, open data can conflict with data privacy and data protection regulations. Head scans are particularly vulnerable because the subject’s face can be reconstructed from the acquired images. Although defacing can impede subject identification in reconstructed image...

To quantify brain structures, usually in vivo T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging data is usually acquired with an isotropic resolution of 1 mm and occasionally of up to 500 μm in clinical and neuroscientific studies. Based on these data the orthological development of the brain or the progression of neurodegenerative as well as psychiatric diso...

Here, we present a reconstruction pipeline written in MATLAB® to reconstruct raw MRI data. Image reconstruction at the scanner’s console is to some extend a black box and no offline out-of-the-box image reconstruction pipeline is publicly available. While e.g. Gadgetron1 and BART2 exists, they do offer a set of tools to reconstruct data rather than...

Pathological alterations to the locus coeruleus, the major source of noradrenaline in the brain, are histologically evident in early stages of neurodegenerative diseases. Novel MRI approaches now provide an opportunity to quantify structural features of the locus coeruleus in vivo during disease progression. In combination with neuropathological bi...

Purpose Recent literature has shown the potential of high‐resolution quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) with ultra‐high field MRI for imaging the anatomy, the vasculature, and investigating their magnetostatic properties. Higher spatial resolutions, however, translate to longer scans resulting, therefore, in higher vulnerability to, and like...

In this work we investigate potential pitfalls in processing high and ultra-high resolution MRI data with FreeSurfer at two important stages of its processing pipeline: the skull stripping and surface generation.

Purpose: Higher magnetic field strengths enable time-of-flight (TOF) angiography with higher resolution to depict small-vessel pathologies. However, this potential is limited by the subject's ability to remain motionless. Even small-scale, involuntary motion can degrade vessel depiction, thus limiting the effective resolution. The aim of this stud...

Bias field correction is an essential prerequisite for image analysis, especially at high field strength. In this study multiple correction methods – based on acquisition of a reference image and computational approaches are compared. The results indicate that acquisition of an MPRAGE corrected by SPM yields comparable results to acquiring a refere...

Scientific Data 4:170032 doi: 10.1038/sdata.2017.32 (2017); Published 14 March 2017; Updated 9 May 2017 The original HTML version of this Data Descriptor incorrectly included Oliver Speck’s name in the Data Citations as ‘Speck, C.’ instead of ‘Speck, O.

We present an ultrahigh resolution in vivo human brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) dataset. It consists of T1-weighted whole brain anatomical data acquired at 7 Tesla with a nominal isotropic resolution of 250 μm of a single young healthy Caucasian subject and was recorded using prospective motion correction. The raw data amounts to approximat...

We present an ultrahigh resolution in vivo human brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) dataset. It consists of T1-weighted whole brain anatomical data acquired at 7 Tesla with a nominal isotropic resolution of 250 µm of a single young healthy Caucasian subject and was recorded using prospective motion correction. The raw data amounts to approximat...

During magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), information about the cardiac activity is required for gating in cardio-vascular MRI (CMR) and for patient monitoring. This can be achieved using electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. However , ECG signals are affected by the different magnetic fields of the MR scanner which can hamper the R-peak detection. Balli...

The amygdala and the hippocampus are two adjacent structures in the medial temporal lobe that have been broadly investigated in functional and structural neuroimaging due to their central importance in sensory perception, emotion, and memory. Exact demarcation of the amygdalo-hippocampal border (AHB) is, however, difficult in conventional structura...

With increasing field strength a suitable inhomogeneity correction is becoming inevitable to perform for example an accurate structural analysis. It has been shown by Sled et al. that their proposed N3 algorithm is able to significantly improve segmentation and surface extraction. Van de Moortele et al. proposed a method for correcting the inhomoge...

Purpose: The analysis of the human cerebral cortex and the measurement of its thickness based on MRI data can provide insight into normal brain development and neurodegenerative disorders. Accurate and reproducible results of the cortical thickness measurement are desired for sensitive detection. This study compares ultra-high resolution data acqu...

The analysis of the human cerebral cortex and the measurement of its thickness based on MRI data provide insight into normal brain development and neurodegenerative disorders. Accurate and reproducible results of the cortical thickness measurement are desired. In addition to data processing tools, the quality (i.e. resolution) of the imaging data i...