Michele R Aizenberg

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Verified

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• M.D.
• Professor at University of Nebraska Medical Center

Background Patients undergoing brain tumor resection experience neurological and cognitive (i.e., neurocognitive) changes reflected in altered performance on neuropsychological tests. These changes can be difficult to explain or predict. Brain connectivity, measured with neuroimaging, offers one potential model for examining these changes. In this...

Objectives The shape is commonly used to describe the objects. State-of-the-art algorithms in medical imaging are predominantly diverging from computer vision, where voxel grids, meshes, point clouds, and implicit surface models are used. This is seen from the growing popularity of ShapeNet (51,300 models) and Princeton ModelNet (127,915 models). H...

Malignant primary brain tumors are notorious for being tumors with high recurrence rates, poor prognosis, and exceedingly difficult to treat. The blood–brain barrier (BBB) poses a significant challenge in treating brain tumors, as it is difficult for chemotherapeutic drugs to bypass it. Nanoparticles can overcome the BBB due to their small size and...

INTRO This is the first observational registry study of R+STaRT, delivered by Cs-131 sources in permanently implanted resorbable collagen tile carriers, for patients with intracranial tumors. METHODS Since October 2020, 37 sites to-date have enrolled 359 patients with primary & metastatic intracranial tumors into the R+STaRT registry to assess the...

BACKGROUND Resection and intraoperative brachytherapy for operable recurrent brain metastasis allows for pathologic confirmation of recurrent disease, mass effect relief, and immediate initiation of radiotherapy (RT). In this analysis, we report patterns-of-use and treatment-related adverse events (AEs) for rBM patients treated with Cs-131 collagen...

Background: Patients undergoing brain tumor resection experience neurological and cognitive (i.e., neurocognitive) changes reflected in altered performance on neuropsychological tests. These changes can be difficult to explain or predict. Brain connectivity, measured with neuroimaging, offers one potential model for examining these changes. In this...

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVE(S) Determining true recurrence versus necrosis alone after previous radiation therapy (RT) for brain metastasis based on imaging alone is difficult. Proper diagnosis is essential, as further radiation is contraindicated in the setting of radiation necrosis without tumor (TUM-). To better understand the rate of pathologic tumor pos...

Designing implants for large and complex cranial defects is a challenging task, even for professional designers. Current efforts on automating the design process focused mainly on convolutional neural networks (CNN), which have produced state-of-the-art results on reconstructing synthetic defects. However, existing CNN-based methods have been diffi...

Background: Patients undergoing brain tumor resection experience changes to their neurocognitive abilities, many of which can be difficult to predict. We hypothesized that changes in brain connectivity could predict changes in neurocognitive functioning, demonstrating the potential for brain connectivity aware surgical planning to provide enhanced...

We present MedShapeNet, a large collection of anatomical shapes (e.g., bones, organs, vessels) and 3D surgical instrument models. Prior to the deep learning era, the broad application of statistical shape models (SSMs) in medical image analysis is evidence that shapes have been commonly used to describe medical data. Nowadays, however, state-of-the...

Cranial implants are commonly used for surgical repair of craniectomy-induced skull defects. These implants are usually generated offline and may require days to weeks to be available. An automated implant design process combined with onsite manufacturing facilities can guarantee immediate implant availability and avoid secondary intervention. To a...

Glioblastoma (GBM) is malignant, primary intracranial neoplasm associated with poor outcomes. Maximal, safe cytoreduction remains an important component of effective treatment for patients with this disease; however, some patients are not candidates for resection due to comorbid status, tumor location, or other factors. In this review, we aimed to...

Purpose: There is a recent trend towards rapid discharge after endoscopic endonasal transsphenoidal surgery (EETS). We aimed to identify factors related to in-hospital complications and 30-day readmissions to help inform postoperative care practices. Methods: This is a retrospective analysis of patients that underwent EETS for resection of a tumor....

Purpose Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most lethal primary brain tumor in adult patients. The disease progression, response to chemotherapy and radiotherapy at initial diagnosis, and prognosis are profoundly associated with the tumor microenvironment, especially the features of tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TII). Recurrent GBM is even more challengin...

Introduction: Growing evidence indicates fractal analysis (FA) has potential as a computational tool to assess tumor microvasculature in glioblastoma (GBM). As fractal parameters of microvasculature have shown to be reliable quantitative biomarkers in brain tumors, there has been similar success in measuring the architecture of tumor tissue using...

While magnetoencephalography (MEG) has proven to be a valuable and reliable tool for presurgical functional mapping of eloquent cortices for at least two decades, widespread use of this technique by clinicians has remained elusive. This modest application may be attributable, at least in part, to misunderstandings regarding the success rate of such...

Designing implants for large and complex cranial defects is a challenging task, even for professional designers. Current efforts on automating the design process focused mainly on convolutional neural networks (CNN), which have produced state-of-the-art results on reconstructing synthetic defects. However, existing CNN-based methods have been diffi...

Accurate individual functional mapping of task activations is a potential tool for biomarker discovery and is critically important for clinical care. While structural imaging does not directly map task activation, we hypothesized that structural imaging contains information that can accurately predict variations in task activation between individua...

Designing implants for large and complex cranial defects is a challenging task, even for professional designers. Current efforts on automating the design process focused mainly on convolutional neural networks (CNN), which have produced state-of-the-art results on reconstructing synthetic defects. However, existing CNN-based methods have been diffi...

Meningiomas are the most common primary intracranial neoplasms. Their presentation is variable with many found incidentally after cranial imaging is performed for an unrelated reason. Although seizure or neurologic deficits may occur, presentation in the setting of acute hemorrhage is rare. Specifically, there are few reports of patients presenting...

As part of the 2021 MICCAI AutoImplant Challenge, CT scans from 11 patients who had undergone cranioplasty using artificial implants were collected. Images of the reconstructed defective skulls before cranioplasty for these patients were shared with participating teams. Three teams submitted cranial implant designs. An experienced neurosurgeon eval...

Purpose: Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most lethal primary brain tumor in adult patients. The disease progression, response to chemotherapy and radiotherapy at initial diagnosis, and prognosis are profoundly associated with the tumor microenvironment (TME), especially the features of tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TII). Recurrent GBM is even more cha...

As part of the 2021 MICCAI AutoImplant Challenge, CT scans from 11 patients who had undergone cranioplasty using artificial implants were collected. Images of the reconstructed defective skulls before cranioplasty for these patients were shared with participating teams. Three teams submitted cranial implant designs. An experienced neurosurgeon eval...

The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of the MICCAI 2020 AutoImplant Challenge1. The approaches and publications submitted and accepted within the challenge will be summarized and reported, highlighting common algorithmic trends and algorithmic diversity. Furthermore, the evaluation results will be presented, compared and dis...

Automatic brain segmentation has the potential to save time and resources for researchers and clinicians. We aimed to improve upon previously proposed methods by implementing the U-Net model and trialing various modifications to the training and inference strategies. The trials were performed and tested on the Multimodal Brain Tumor Segmentation da...

Cranioplasty is the surgical process where a skull defect resulting from previous surgery or injury is repaired using an implant that restores the original protective and aesthetic function of the skull. Implications range from decompressive craniectomies to performing brain surgery. Although the patient’s autologous bone is routinely used as the i...

Background: Optimal management of grade II meningiomas following resection remains controversial, owing mostly to the heterogeneity of post-operative (post-op) recurrence patterns across studies. Improved risk stratification of these patients would ensure that only those most at risk of recurrence would undergo appropriate post-op radiation therap...

Purpose Studies have evaluated the application of perfusion MR for predicting survival in patients with astrocytic brain tumors, but few of them statistically adjust their results to reflect the impact of the variability of treatment administered in the patients. Our aim was to analyze the association between the perfusion values and overall surviv...

Automatic cranial implant design can save clinicians time and resources by computing the implant shape and size from a single image of a defective skull. We aimed to improve upon previously proposed deep learning methods by augmenting the training data set using transformations that warped the images into different shapes and orientations. The tran...

Accurate individual functional mapping of task activations is a potential tool for biomarker discovery and is critically important for clinical care. While structural imaging does not directly map task activation, we hypothesized that structural imaging contains information that can accurately predict variations in task activation between individua...

Objective: By looking at how the accuracy of preoperative brain mapping methods vary according to differences in the distance from the activation clusters used for the analysis, the present study aimed to elucidate how preoperative functional neuroimaging may be used in such a way that maximizes the mapping accuracy. Methods: The eloquent functi...

Pseudoprogression and radiation necrosis prevent confident interpretation of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) results and lead to challenges in the management of glioblastoma (GBM). We examined the utility of matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2) and neutrophil gelatinaseassociated lipocalin (NGAL) in the serum and urine as biomarkers of tumor burden...

Pseudoprogression and radiation necrosis prevent confident interpretation of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) results and lead to challenges in the management of glioblastoma (GBM). We examined the utility of matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2) and neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL) in the serum and urine as biomarkers of tumor burden...

A fundamental assumption of neuroscience is that brain function is determined by brain structure. Even in healthy populations, both brain structure and brain function vary between individuals and groups. We hypothesize that individual and group differences in functional brain activation can be predicted by localized structural patterns of diffusivi...

Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leak is a common complication after cranial surgery. Therefore, after neurosurgical procedures it is crucial to obtain a dural repair that is complete and watertight. There are many techniques that have been described attempting to achieve this goal. However, there are complicating factors (eg, poor tissue viability, need...

Purpose Perfusion and diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provide important biomarkers for brain tumor analysis. Our aim was to investigate if regions of increased perfusion or tumor with restricted diffusion on the immediate post-operative MRI examination would be predictive of time to tumor progression in patients with high-grade gliomas....

All rCBV measurements from the elevated perfusion found in the resection area. (XLSX)

Introduction Glioblastoma (GBM) is heterogeneous and underlying genomic profiles influence evolution, resistance, and therapeutic responses. While extensive knowledge regarding genomic profiling of primary GBM exists, there remains a lack of understanding of genomic differences in recurrent GBM. Methods We used the FoundationOne® comprehensive gen...

INTRODUCTION Glioblastoma (GBM) is known to be heterogeneous, but a knowledge gap exists regarding its genetic alterations and their influence on evolution, resistance, and therapeutic response. METHODS The FoundationOne® comprehensive genomic profile was utilized to analyze ten patients’ matched primary and recurrent GBM. The profile looks for mu...

There is little data on why glioblastomas (GBM) hemorrhage and how it may affect patient outcomes. The aim of this study was to investigate the mechanisms of hemorrhage in glioblastoma by examining molecular and genetic features by immunohistochemistry (IHC) and mRNA expression profiles in association with imaging and clinical outcomes. An observat...

The molecular features of a tumor also have potential to shape an overall treatment strategy before resection. Although we do not advocate biopsy as a precursor to a definitive procedure, there may be instances when a biopsy to evaluate tumor type and molecular features would be appropriate to tailor surgical intervention. Quality of life is vitall...

Epstein–Barr virus–associated smooth muscle tumors (EBV-SMTs) are rare lesions that occur in immunocompromised patients. Dural involvement appears to be less common in organ transplant recipients than in HIV patients. Due to the paucity of reported cases following organ transplantation, the natural history of these lesions is unclear. We describe a...

Objective: Primary central nervous system non-Hodgkin lymphoma (PCNSL) is a malignant lymphoma limited to the cranial-spinal axis in the absence of systemic lymphoma. Historically, PCNSL accounts for fewer than 5% of all cases of primary intracranial neoplasms. PCNSL is rare in immunocompetent young adults. Although the prognosis for PCNSL is poor...

Gliomas are the most common form of tumor in the CNS and are exceptionally heterogeneous. Accurately characterizing gliomas, in terms of grade and type, is essential for predicting the rate of tumor progression. Histopathological grading and analysis based on biopsied tissue remains the gold standard, but non- and semi-invasive neuroimaging also pl...

Patients presenting with spinal metastases from unknown primary tumors (UPTs) are rare. The authors reviewed their surgical experience to evaluate outcomes and identify predictors of survival in these patients. This study is a retrospective analysis of patients undergoing surgery for metastatic spine disease from UPTs between June 1993 and February...

Systemic enzyme replacement for Gaucher's disease has not prevented premature death or severe morbidity in patients with a neuronopathic phenotype, because the enzyme does not cross the blood-brain barrier. We used convection-enhanced delivery for regional distribution of glucocerebrosidase in rat and primate brains and examined its safety and feas...