Michael Hoch

• MD
• Medical Doctor at Emory University

Background and purpose: The Brain Tumor Reporting and Data System (BT-RADS) is a structured radiology reporting algorithm that was introduced to provide uniformity in post-treatment primary brain tumor follow-up and reporting, but its interrater reliability (IRR) assessment has not been widely studied. Our goal is to evaluate the IRR among neurora...

Multidisciplinary tumor boards (TB) are an essential part of brain tumor care, but quantifying the impact of imaging on patient management is challenging due to treatment complexity and a lack of quantitative outcome measures. This work uses a structured reporting system for classifying brain tumor MRIs, the brain tumor reporting and data system (B...

Background and purpose: Spontaneous intracranial hypotension (SIH) is a known cause of headaches and neurologic symptoms, but the frequency of cranial nerve symptoms and abnormalities on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has not been well described. The purpose of this study was to document cranial nerve findings in patients with SIH and determine...

Background and purpose: High-grade glioma (HGG), including glioblastoma, is the most common primary brain neoplasm and has a dismal prognosis. After initial treatment, follow-up decisions are guided by longitudinal MRI performed at routine intervals. The Brain Tumor Reporting and Data System (BT-RADS) is a proposed structured reporting system for...

Human brainstem internal anatomy is intricate, complex, and essential to normal brain function. The brainstem is affected by stroke, multiple sclerosis, and most neurodegenerative diseases-a 1-mm focus of pathologic condition can have profound clinical consequences. Unfortunately, detailed internal brainstem anatomy is difficult to see with convent...

Conventional MR imaging does not discriminate basal ganglia and thalamic internal anatomy well. Radiology reports describe anatomic locations but not specific functional structures. Functional neurosurgery uses indirect targeting based on commissural coordinates or atlases that do not fully account for individual variability. We describe innovative...

CT myelography is an important imaging modality that combines the advantages of myelography and the high resolution of CT. It provides a detailed delineation of pathologic spine conditions, especially those involving the thecal sac and its contents. However, the role of CT myelography has dramatically and appropriately decreased with the advent of...

PurposeReduced gray-white matter contrast along the central sulcus has been described on T1- and T2-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The purpose of this study was to assess the gray-white matter contrast of the motor cortex on double inversion recovery (DIR), a sequence with superior gray-white matter differentiation.Methods The gray-whit...

Background and purpose: Diffusion MR imaging sequences essential for clinical neuroradiology imaging protocols may be accelerated with simultaneous multislice acquisitions. We tested whether simultaneous multislice-accelerated diffusion data were clinically equivalent to standard acquisitions. Materials and methods: In this retrospective study,...

Central nervous system (CNS) sequelae continue to be common in HIV-infected individuals despite combination antiretroviral therapy (cART). These sequelae include HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder (HAND) and virologic persistence in the CNS. Resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) is a widely used tool to examine the integr...

Diffusion MR imaging exploits the diffusion properties of water to generate contrast between normal tissue and pathology. Diffusion is an essential component of nearly all brain tumor MR imaging examinations. This review covers the important clinical applications of diffusion weighted imaging in the pretreatment diagnosis and grading of brain tumor...

Background and purpose: The brain stem is a complex configuration of small nuclei and pathways for motor, sensory, and autonomic control that are essential for life, yet internal brain stem anatomy is difficult to characterize in living subjects. We hypothesized that the 3D fast gray matter acquisition T1 inversion recovery sequence, which uses a...

Objectives Clinically relevant neuroanatomy is challenging to teach, learn and remember since many functionally important structures are visualized best using histology stains from serial 2D planar sections of the brain. In clinical patients, the locations of specific structures then must be inferred from spatial position and surface anatomy. A 3D...

CT myelography is an important imaging modality that combines the advantages of myelography and the high resolution of CT. It provides a detailed delineation of pathologic spine conditions, especially those involving the thecal sac and its contents. However, the role of CT myelography has dramatically and appropriately decreased with the advent of...

Background: The Brain Tumor Reporting and Data System (BT-RADS) is a proposed standardized radiology reporting scheme for magnetic resonance imagings in brain tumor patients. A website was created to introduce the classification system and to promote its use during daily radiology readouts with trainees. Objectives: To demonstrate how a website...

A 44-year-old man initially presented with a right thalamic brain tumor that was confirmed with stereotactic biopsy to be glioblastoma (GBM). The patient was treated with radiotherapy and temozolomide for 6 weeks. At 1 month after completing chemoradiation therapy, the patient underwent follow-up imaging that revealed the primary lesion had mildly...

INTRODUCTION Longitudinal imaging evaluation of brain tumor patients with MRI is a challenging endeavor, as there is considerable overlap between imaging findings of tumor progression and treatment related changes. There is felt to be a high degree of variation between individual interpreters, particularly in complex cases. Structured reporting sys...

Rationale and Objectives Determine the objective benefits of structured reporting of brain tumors through Brain tumor-RADS (BT-RADS) by analyzing discrete quantifiable metrics of the reports themselves. Materials and Methods Following Institutional Review Board approval, post-treatment glioma reports were acquired from two matched 3-month time per...

Rationale and objectives: Analyze the impact of implementing a structured reporting system for primary brain tumors, the Brain Tumor Reporting and Data System, on attitudes toward radiology reports at a single institution. Materials and methods: Following Institutional Review Board approval, an initial 22 question, 5 point (1-worst to 5-best), s...

Fogging is a deceptive phenomenon that can partially or completely obscure a subacute infarct on noncontrast head CT. We present the appearance of infarct fogging on CT perfusion through 3 cases. At time of fogging, the subacute infarctions demonstrated variable mean transit time with increased cerebral blood volume and cerebral blood flow on CT pe...

Background and purpose: Spontaneous intracranial hypotension (SIH) is a significant, treatable cause of postural headache, although the best diagnostic approach to diagnosing cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leaks remains uncertain. The aim of this study is to evaluate the most common techniques used to diagnose leaks, the most frequent leak sites, and ep...

Background and purpose: The basal forebrain contains multiple structures of great interest to emerging functional neurosurgery applications, yet many neuroradiologists are unfamiliar with this neuroanatomy because it is not resolved with current clinical MR imaging. Materials and methods: We applied an optimized TSE T2 sequence to washed whole p...

Introduction: Contrast-enhanced (CE) Constructive Interference in Steady State (CISS) and Volumetric Interpolated Breath-hold Examination (VIBE) are MRI sequences used to improve the detection of pituitary adenomas and adjacent cranial nerves. The purpose of this study was to assess image quality and identify imaging predictors of postoperative ho...

In brain tumor patients, worsening of imaging findings in the first 6 months after surgical debulking and chemoradiation can occur in the absence of tumor growth, a phenomenon known as pseudoprogression. Awareness of pseudoprogression is important as it can lead to unnecessary additional changes in patient management. In this case, a patient with b...

BACKGROUND Intramedullary spinal cord neoplasms (ISCN) pose significant management challenges. Advances in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) (such as diffusion tensor imaging, DTI) have been utilized to determine the infiltrative nature and resectability of ISCN. However, this has not been applied to intraoperative decision making. OBJECTIVE To pre...

Background and purpose: The brain stem is compactly organized with life-sustaining sensorimotor and autonomic structures that can be affected by numerous pathologies but can be difficult to resolve on conventional MR imaging. Materials and methods: We applied an optimized TSE T2 sequence to washed postmortem brain samples to reveal exquisite and...

Background and purpose: High-resolution T2-weighted sequences are frequently used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies to assess the cerebellopontine angle and internal auditory canal (IAC) in sensorineural hearing loss patients but have low yield and lengthened examinations. Because image content in the Wavelet domain is sparse, compressed...

Semantic dementia is a variant of primary progressive aphasia. PET/MR imaging is excellent at displaying the characteristic asymmetric focal atrophy and hypometabolism involving the temporal lobe which eventually progresses diffusely throughout the brain.

Posterior cortical atrophy is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that predominantly affects the occipital cortex and is referred to as a “visual variant of Alzheimer’s disease.” PET/MR imaging demonstrates hypometabolism in the parieto-occipital areas with relative sparing of the cingulate gyrus as well as in the bilateral frontal eye field r...

Logopenic primary progressive aphasia is an atypical variant of Alzheimer’s disease characterized by decreased rate of spontaneous language production. PET/MR imaging demonstrates cortical atrophy and corresponding hypometabolism, typically most severe in the left lateral temporoparietal region.

Crossed cerebellar diaschisis is characterized by depressed blood flow, decreased metabolism, and resulting atrophy of a cerebellar hemisphere caused by injury or lesion involving the contralateral supratentorial cerebral hemisphere. PET/MR imaging provides the anatomical detail to identify the cerebral insult and demonstrates depressed metabolism...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disease. Neuroimaging with PET/MR provides superior anatomic detail to demonstrate characteristic hypometabolism in the parietotemporal cortices, posterior cingulate, and precuneus regions. With disease progression, there is more cortical atrophy in the regions of decreased metabolic act...

Mesial temporal sclerosis is the most common cause of temporal lobe epilepsy. The combination of anatomic and functional information with PET/MR imaging precisely localizes the seizure focus.

Dementia with Lewy body (DLB) is characterized by cognitive decline, visual hallucinations, and motor Parkinsonism. Hybrid PET/MR imaging is useful in differentiating DLB from other neurodegenerative disorders as there is less pronounced global atrophy and hypometabolism that also affects the occipital lobes in addition to the posterior temporal an...

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is a type of spongiform encephalopathy caused by an infectious protein agent called a prion. PET/MR imaging shows T2 and FLAIR hyperintensity in the basal ganglia and cerebral cortex with decreased FDG uptake.

Oligodendroglioma is a primary brain tumor that commonly presents as a partially calcified cortical or subcortical mass in middle-aged adults or children. PET/MR imaging demonstrates a mass with heterogeneous enhancement and mild to moderate FDG uptake depending on the WHO tumor grade.

Coloboma of the eye, Heart defects, Atresia of the choanae, Retardation of growth and/or development, Genital and/or urinary abnormalities, and Ear abnormalities and deafness (CHARGE) syndrome is a disorder with multiple congenital anomalies seen on imaging. A retrospective review of 10 patients with CHARGE syndrome who underwent MR imaging of the...

Diffusion imaging of the spine has the potential to change clinical management, but is challenging due to the small size of the cord and susceptibility artifacts from adjacent structures. Reduced field-of-view (rFOV) diffusion can improve image quality by decreasing the echo train length. Over the past 2 years, we have acquired a rFOV diffusion seq...

Background: Clinical orbital MRI protocols are routinely used to study the optic nerves and exclude compressive lesions, infarctions, or inflammation. However, the small caliber and divergent oblique orientations of the optic nerves make it challenging to characterize them well with conventional MRI, especially since adjacent air-filled bony struc...

Palliative cervical cordotomy can be performed via percutaneous radiofrequency ablation of the lateral C1-2 spinothalamic tract. This rare procedure can be safe, effective, and advantageous in mitigating medically intractable unilateral extremity pain for selected patients with end-stage cancer. This report reviews the indications, techniques, risk...

A 32-year-old female with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS) presented with severe new onset ataxia and diplopia. MRI showed a new inflammatory MS lesion that involved the right dorsal pons and extended into the adjacent superior cerebellar peduncle. The patient improved with aggressive immunotherapy; however, repeat MRI 3 months later rev...

von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease is an autosomal-dominant, hereditary, multisystem neoplasia syndrome with increased susceptibility to several benign and malignant tumors. VHL occurs in about 1 in 36,000 live births and is associated with germline mutation of the VHL tumor suppressor gene on the short arm of chromosome 3. VHL disease exhibits divers...

Two new 3T MR imaging contrast methods, track density imaging and echo modulation curve T2 mapping, were combined with simultaneous multisection acquisition to reveal exquisite anatomic detail at 7 canonical levels of the brain stem. Compared with conventional MR imaging contrasts, many individual brain stem tracts and nuclear groups were directly...

The purpose of the present review is to discuss and display orbital lesions that demonstrate hypo-intense signal on T2-weighted images (T2WI). The physical basis for hypo-intense signal on T2WI produced by various substances is discussed. Orbital lesions that are hypo-intense on T2WI are subsequently reviewed, including a discussion on their compos...

We report an instructive case of extraskeletal osteosarcoma in a 63-year-old African American male who presented after an episode of recent trauma, with clinical and radiological features characteristic of this neoplasm. Osteosarcoma is the most common primary malignant tumor of bone in young adults, but the extraskeletal variety is very uncommon....

Amyloidosis is a disease related to abnormal protein folding and deposition of that abnormal protein between cells of the body in various tissues and organs, resulting in multiple clinical manifestations. We report a case of amyloidosis with atypical features, isolated to the mediastinum, in a 75-year-old male who presented with fatigue and shortne...

We report a case of CPPD crowned dens syndrome in an 87 year white old male with a known history of pseudogout, with clinical and radiological features characteristic of this syndrome. Interestingly, there was significant mass effect on the clivus, with clivus erosion and destruction, a finding that has not previously been described with this syndr...

With continued increase in imaging utilization and remote access image viewing technology, many academic radiology departments are presented with the suggestion to supplement on-call resident preliminary reports with an outsourced attending interpretation. This idea is often brought to administrative attention because of the subjective impression t...