Hagen H. Kitzler

TU Dresden | TUD · Department of Neuroradiology

Background The aim of this study was to investigate the dynamics of annual whole brain volume loss (BVL/year) and annual thalamic volume loss (ThalaVL/year) in patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (PwRRMS) during the course of the disease. Methods A longitudinal database of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of 195 healthy indi...

Pelizaeus‐Merzbacher disease (PMD) is a rare childhood hypomyelinating leukodystrophy. Quantification of the pronounced myelin deficit and delineation of subtle myelination processes are of high clinical interest. Quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (qMRI) techniques can provide in vivo insights into myelination status, its spatial distribution...

Clinical research emphasizes the implementation of rigorous and reproducible study designs that rely on between-group matching or controlling for sources of biological variation such as subject’s sex and age. However, corrections for body size (i.e. height and weight) are mostly lacking in clinical neuroimaging designs. This study investigates the...

Objectives Symmetry is essential for computer-aided surgical (CAS) procedures in oral and maxillofacial surgery (OMFS). A critical step for successful CAS is mirroring the unaffected side to create a template for the virtual reconstruction of the injured anatomical structure. The aim was to identify specific anatomical landmarks of the midfacial sk...

Objectives To develop an automatic method for accurate and robust thalamus segmentation in T1w-MRI for widespread clinical use without the need for strict harmonization of acquisition protocols and/or scanner-specific normal databases. Methods A three-dimensional convolutional neural network (3D-CNN) was trained on 1975 T1w volumes from 170 MRI sc...

Background Multiple Sclerosis (MS) lesions are pathologically heterogeneous and the temporal behavior in terms of growth and myelination status of individual lesions is highly variable, especially in the early phase of the disease. Thus, monitoring the development of individual lesion myelination by using quantitative magnetic resonance myelin wate...

Purpose Total intracranial volume (TIV) is often a nuisance covariate in MRI-based brain volumetry. This study compared two TIV adjustment methods with respect to their impact on z-scores in single subject analyses of regional brain volume estimates. Methods Brain parenchyma, hippocampus, thalamus, and TIV were segmented in a normal database compr...

Introduction: Stroke accounts for 4% of patients with acute vertigo, which is missed in up to one third of cases. Hypothesis: We hypothesized that detection of stroke underlying acute vertigo using HINTS plus (head-impulse test, nystagmus type, test of skew, hearing loss) can be improved by videooculography for automated analysis of head-impulse te...

Objective: To determine the diagnostic agreement of CT angiography (CTA) manual multiplanar reformatting (MPR) stenosis diameter measurement and semiautomated perpendicular stenosis area minimal caliber computation of extracranial internal carotid artery (ICA) stenosis. Methods: We analyzed acute cerebral ischemia CTA at our tertiary stroke center...

Background: We assessed whether detection of stroke underlying acute vertigo using HINTS plus (head-impulse test, nystagmus type, test of skew, hearing loss) can be improved by video-oculography for automated head-impulse test (V-HIT) analysis. Methods: We evaluated patients with acute vestibular syndrome (AVS) presenting to the emergency room u...

In a companion paper by Cohen-Adad et al . we introduce the spine generic quantitative MRI protocol that provides valuable metrics for assessing spinal cord macrostructural and microstructural integrity. This protocol was used to acquire a single subject dataset across 19 centers and a multi-subject dataset across 42 centers (for a total of 260 par...

Quantitative spinal cord (SC) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) presents many challenges, including a lack of standardized imaging protocols. Here we present a prospectively harmonized quantitative MRI protocol, which we refer to as the spine generic protocol, for users of 3T MRI systems from the three main manufacturers: GE, Philips and Siemens. Th...

Removing function from a developed and functional sensory system is known to alter both cerebral morphology and functional connections. To date, a majority of studies assessing sensory-dependent plasticity have focused on effects from either early onset or long-term sensory loss and little is known how the recent sensory loss affects the human brai...

Purpose: We sought to determine the diagnostic agreement between the revised ultrasonography approach by the German Society of Ultrasound in Medicine (DEGUM) and the established Society of Radiologists in Ultrasound (SRU) consensus criteria for the grading of carotid artery disease. Materials and methods: Post-hoc analysis of a prospective multi...

Intro The human sense of smell is highly individual and characterized by a strong variability in the perception and evaluation of olfactory stimuli, depending on cultural imprint and current physiological conditions. Since this individual perspective has often been neglected in fMRI studies on olfactory hedonic coding, this study focuses on the neu...

Removing function from a developed and functional sensory system is known to alter both cerebral morphology and functional connections. To date, a majority of studies assessing sensory-dependent plasticity have focused on effects from either early onset or long-term sensory loss and little is known how the recent sensory loss affects the human brai...

Introduction Several recent studies indicate that deep gray matter or thalamic volume loss (VL) might be promising surrogate markers of disease activity in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. To allow applying these markers to individual MS patients in clinical routine, age-dependent cut-offs distinguishing physiological from pathological VL and an e...

The quantification of new or enlarged lesions from follow-up MRI scans is an important surrogate of clinical disease activity in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). Not only is manual segmentation time consuming, but inter-rater variability is high. Currently, only a few fully automated methods are available. We address this gap in the field by...

See article on pages E7–E8 in this issue.

Background: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an established method of treatment for Parkinson's disease (PD). A stimulation sweet spot at the interface between the motor and associative clusters of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) has recently been postulated. The aim of this study was to analyze the available clustering methods for the STN and their...

Background: Multiple Sclerosis Partners Advancing Technology and Health Solutions (MS PATHS) is the first example of a learning health system in multiple sclerosis (MS). This paper describes the initial implementation of MS PATHS and initial patient characteristics. Methods: MS PATHS is an ongoing initiative conducted in 10 healthcare institutions...

Multiple sclerosis is an inflammatory autoimmune demyelinating disease that is characterized by lesions in the central nervous system. Typically, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is used for tracking disease progression. Automatic image processing methods can be used to segment lesions and derive quantitative lesion parameters. So far, methods have...

Introduction: Arterial hypertension is the most frequent cause for spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage (sICH) and may also cause left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH). We sought to analyze whether hypertensive sICH etiology is associated with LVH. Methods: We analyzed consecutive patients with sICH who were admitted to our tertiary stroke center d...

Patients with anosmia exhibit structural and functional brain abnormalities. The present study explored changes in brain white matter (WM) in non-neurodegenerative anosmia using diffusion-tensor-based network analysis. Twenty patients with anosmia and sixteen healthy controls were recruited in the cross-sectional, case–control study. Participants u...

Die Magnetresonanztomografie spielt bei Multipler Sklerose eine zentrale Rolle bei der Erfassung der Krankheitsdynamik. Es gibt zudem neuere, zunehmend alltagstaugliche Techniken, die zukünftig zur Detektion der therapieinduzierten Remyelinisierung, der kortikalen Läsionen oder der leptomeningealen Inflammation eingesetzt werden können.

The insular cortex plays a key role in the integration of multimodal information and in interoceptive and exteroceptive processing. For instance, neurons in the central dorsal insula that are active during interoceptive tasks, also show an adaptation to gustatory stimulation. We tested the link between interoception and exteroception for the olfact...

Background The optimal targets for deep brain stimulation (DBS) in patients with refractory chronic pain are not clearly defined. We applied sensory functional MRI (fMRI)- and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI)-based DBS in chronic pain patients into 3 different targets to ascertain the most beneficial individual stimulation site. Methods Three patien...

Previous studies on olfactory function in patients with bipolar disorder (BD) are limited and contradictory. The current study aimed to comprehensively analyze the olfactory function of patients with euthymic BD using psychophysical, electrophysiological and neuroimaging techniques. Twenty-one patients with BD in remission and 20 healthy controls w...

Objective To evaluate individual neurofilament light chain (NfL) variation over the time of disease course and the potential of NfL measurement to predict treatment response in patients with MS.Methods We investigated 15 patients with MS after immune reconstitution treatment with alemtuzumab (ATZ). Monthly serum NfL (sNFL) measurements were correla...

Background Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is used to follow-up multiple sclerosis (MS) and evaluate disease progression and therapy response via lesion quantification. However, there is a lack of automated post-processing techniques to quantify individual MS lesion change. Objective The present study developed a secondary post-processing algorit...

Purpose The German Society of Ultrasound in Medicine (DEGUM) recently revised its multiparametric criteria for duplex ultrasonography (DUS) grading of internal carotid artery (ICA) disease. We determined the diagnostic accuracy of the revised DEGUM criteria for ultrasonography grading of ICA disease in a prospective multicenter study. Materials and...

Background and Aims: Arterial hypertension is a major cause of spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). We sought to determine the rates of hematoma growth in patients with hypertensive ICH compared to non-hypertensive ICH etiology. Method: We performed a retrospective, single-center, observational cohort study. We included all consecutive pati...

We performed a longitudinal case-control study on patients with clinically isolated syndrome (CIS) with the aid of quantitative whole-brain myelin imaging. The aim was (1) to parse early myelin decay and to break down its distribution pattern, and (2) to identify an imaging biomarker of the conversion into clinically definite Multiple Sclerosis (MS...

Alemtuzumab exerts its clinical efficacy by its specific pattern of depletion and repopulation of different immune cell subsets. Recently, single cases of multiple sclerosis patients who developed severe exacerbation after the first alemtuzumab application, accompanied by re-appearance of peripheral B cells, were reported. Here we present a case wi...

Background: Removal of the olfactory bulb (OB) leads to depression like behavior in rodents. A link between depression and olfactory function is also established in humans. We hypothesized that the human OB volume relates to depressive state and tested whether such a potential coherence is moderated by structural alterations in other brain regions...

Introduction: Individuals with unexplained smell loss constitute an at-risk population for the development of Parkinson's disease (PD). Currently, no specific MRI patterns are known for early PD diagnosis. In this study, we measured the fractional anisotropy (FA) in the substantia nigra (SN) in PD patients, in patients with idiopathic smell loss,...

Background: Major Depression is mainly related to structural and functional alterations in brain networks involving limbic and prefrontal regions. Reduced olfactory sensitivity in depression is associated with reduced olfactory bulb (OB) volume. We determined if the OB volume reduction is a specific biomarker for depression and whether its diagnos...

Background With regard to somatosensory delusion, neglect or deficits of body integrity a great number of overlapping pathophysiological concepts exist. Moreover, the range of assumed underlying psychiatric and neurologic syndromes only partially is thought to be related to even diverse neuroanatomical structures so far: Alien Hand Syndrome, Body D...

Background Static encephalopathy of childhood with neurodegeneration in adulthood is a phenotypically distinctive, X-linked dominant subtype of neurodegeneration with brain iron accumulation (NBIA). WDR45 mutations were recently identified as causal. WDR45 encodes a beta-propeller scaffold protein with a putative role in autophagy, and the disease...

Objective: Multiple recent studies have reported on diffusion tensor-based fiber tracking of cranial nerves in vestibular schwannoma, with conflicting results as to the accuracy of the method and the occurrence of cochlear nerve depiction. Probabilistic non-tensor based tractography might offer advantages in terms of better extraction of direction...

61. Wissenschaftliche Jahrestagung der P36 Background With regard to somatosensory delusion, neglect or deficits of body integrity a great number of overlapping pathophysiological concepts exist. Moreover, the range of assumed underlying psychiatric and neurologic syndromes only partially is thought to be related to even diverse neuroanatomical str...

Introduction: Novel multi-parametric criteria for duplex ultrasonography (DUS) grading of extracranial internal carotid artery (ICA) steno-occlusive disease have been recently introduced by the German ultrasound expert panel (DEGUM). We sought to determine diagnostic accuracy of the DEGUM criteria against the gold standard catheter angiography. Met...

Introduction: The novel multi-parametric ‘DEGUM’ duplex ultrasonography (DUS) criteria may improve accuracy of extracranial carotid artery grading but have not been compared with the established Society of Radiologists in Ultrasound (SRU) consensus criteria yet. We sought to investigate the diagnostic agreement between these two widely used DUS app...

OBJECTIVE The depiction of cranial nerves (CNs) using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is of great interest in skull base tumor surgery and DTI used with deterministic tracking methods has been reported previously. However, there are still no good methods usable for the elimination of noise from the resulting depictions. The authors have hypothesized...

Introduction The German Society of Ultrasound in Medicine (known by its acronym DEGUM) recently proposed a novel multi-parametric ultrasound approach for comprehensive and accurate assessment of extracranial internal carotid artery (ICA) steno-occlusive disease. We determined the agreement between duplex ultrasonography (DUS) interpreted by the DEG...

An overwhelming benefit from endovascular treatment of ischaemic stroke could be shown in recent clinical trials, making it the new evidence-based standard of care for ischaemic stroke due to large vessel occlusion. To provide all eligible stroke patients with this therapy at any time, stroke networks and hospitals should streamline their workflow...

Purpose Clinically successful endovascular therapy (EVT) in ischemic stroke requires reliable noninvasive pretherapeutic selection criteria. We investigated the association of imaging parameters including CT angiographic collaterals and degree of reperfusion with clinical outcome after EVT. Methods In our database, we identified 93 patients with l...

Objective To determine the value of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) histogram parameters for the prediction of individual survival in patients undergoing surgery for recurrent glioblastoma (GBM) in a retrospective cohort study. Methods Thirty-one patients who underwent surgery for first recurrence of a known GBM between 2008 and 2012 were incl...

Introduction: Novel multi-parametric criteria for duplex ultrasonography (DUS) grading of extracranial internal carotid artery (ICA) steno-occlusive disease have been recently introduced by the German ultrasound expert panel (DEGUM). We sought to determine diagnostic accuracy of the DEGUM criteria against the gold standard catheter angiography. Met...

Introduction: To determine the diagnostic agreement between manual and semi-automated vessel analysis software measurements of extracranial internal carotid artery (ICA) steno-occlusive disease on CT-angiography (CTA). Methods: We studied consecutive patients with acute cerebral ischemia who were admitted (01/2012 to 12/2012) to our academic stroke...

Background: Cortical lesions in status epilepticus have been reported but the underlying mechanisms are poorly elucidated. Case summary: We report on afemale patient (75 years) with a history of alcohol abuse who presented with complex partial status epilepticus and lateralized epileptiform discharges in the left frontal and temporal regions in...

RESULTS Fig.1 Transmission electron micrograph of a myelinated axon (source Trinity College Dublin) REFERENCES [1] Deoni et al., Magn Reson Med. 2008; 6:1372-87 [2] Kitzler et al. NeuroImage. 2012;59(3):2670-7 [3] Kitzler et al. METHODS Fig.2 Segmented FLAIR lesions and corresponding AFIL detected and labelled lesions in a time-series (top row). Fa...

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most common primary brain tumour in adults. The standard therapy for GBM is maximal surgical resection followed by radiotherapy with concurrent and adjuvant temozolomide (TMZ). In spite of the extensive treatment, the disease is associated with poor clinical outcome. Further intensification of standard treatment...

Although amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary pathology play important roles in Alzheimer disease (AD), our understanding of AD is incomplete, and the contribution of microglia and iron to neurodegeneration is unknown. High-field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is exquisitely sensitive to microscopic iron. To explore iron-associated neuroinflammato...

Background: A novel multiparametric approach from the Neurosonology Research Group (NSRG) of the World Federation of Neurology has been proposed for duplex ultrasound (DUS) grading of internal carotid artery (ICA) stenosis. We aimed to determine the accuracy of CT-angiography (CTA) compared with the widely used NSRG ultrasound criteria for diagnosi...

Considering the correlation between olfactory function and size of the human olfactory bulb (OB), it may be that OB volume is representative of the average number of functional olfactory receptor neurons in the nose. We observed a woman (64-year-old) with a 3-week history of hyposmia following an upper respiratory tract infection. Interestingly, bo...

Rationale and Objectives The purpose of this study was to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of positron emission tomography/magnetic resonance imaging (PET/MR) with 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) for nodal involvement in malignant lymphoma. Materials and Methods Twenty-seven patients with malignant lymphoma (16 men and 11 women; mean age, 45...

To assess the diagnostic value of PET/MR (positron emission tomography/magnetic resonance imaging) with FDG (18F-fluorodeoxyglucose) for lymph node staging in head and neck cancer. This prospective study was approved by the local ethics committee; all patients signed informed consent. Thirty-eight patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head a...

In cases of suspected mastoiditis, imaging is used to evaluate the extent of mastoid destruction and possible complications. The role of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in mastoiditis has not been systematically evaluated. To assess the diagnostic performance of MRI in patients with suspected acute mastoiditis. Twenty-three patients with suspected...

Imaging plays an important role for therapy planning in patients with suspected neck abscess, which can be life-treatening. The purpose of this retrospective study was to assess the sensitivity and specificity of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for neck abscess detection in pediatric patients. Thirty patients (14 m, 16 f; age range 2 mo – 16 yr; m...

The Clinically Isolated Syndrome (CIS) is the precursor of Multiple Sclerosis (MS), an immunologically mediated demyelinating and axonal disease. Clinically silent white matter (WM) lesional pathology suggestive of demyelination is only found in up to 70% of patients at initial presentation and there is only a moderate correlation of the initial vo...