1. Medical Imaging for Neurodegenerative Diseases INFN CdS 7/2011 Giorgio De Nunzio giorgio.denunzio@unisalento.it

2. a stepchild… why is it here?! About MIND (1) Inspired by MAGIC5 (Medical Applications on a Grid Infrastructure Connection) experiences:  Lung nodules Lung segmentation (published - JDI) CAD (Computer Assisted Detection) system for pleural nodules (published in 2D - NIMA, work in progress in 3D)  Alzheimer’s Disease Hippocampus, template extraction (submitted to Jour. of Neuroimaging)  [Glioma CAD (published – NIMA) Grant from Ministero della Salute (Progetto “Ricerca Finalizzata 2009”) “A NOVEL DIFFUSION TENSOR MR-BASED APPROACH TO EVALUATE STRUCTURAL FEATURES OF BRAIN TUMORS”] Lecce/Genova/Torino/Bari Medical Imaging for Neurodegenerative Diseases: MIND is monothematic CAD scheme: signal preprocessing (noise etc) segmentation regions of interest feature calculation classification (ANN): healthy/pathologic

3. About MIND (2) Cerebral neurodegeneration (e.g.the Alzheimer’s Disease, AD) Cognitive symptoms Self-sufficiency loss Behavioral disorder Hospitalization Death Overallcognitiveability 0510 ? IncipientMildSevere years Mild Cognitive Impairment: a transitional stage between normal condition and dementia Part of MCI patients will develop dementia… but part will not! Slide by Andrea Chincarini – INFN GE

4. About MIND (3)  Molecular imaging:  Amyloid PET,FDG-PET  Structural MRI:  Hippocampus, Enthorinal cortex, Medial Temporal Lobe  Biochemistry:  CSF (Celebro-Spinal Fluid), Oxidative stress, Tau/a   More sophisticated techniques:  DTI (Diffusion Tensor Imaging)  fMRI-BOLD (Blood Oxygen Level Dependent signal)  … Alzheimer Normal CSF total tau CSF A β 42 Neuroimaging as a diagnosis tool: Brain atrophy Slide by Andrea Chincarini – INFN GE

5. Project details (1) Early diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases (ND) (e.g. AD) in DTI (Diffusion Tensor Images)  DTI (or MR-DTI) is an advanced MRI technique that is able to measure and distinguish isotropic and anisotropic water-molecule diffusion in tissues → see next slide  Literature: signs of ND are found in DTI maps of isotropy (Medium Diffusivity) and anisotropy (Fractional Anisotropy)  Code for studying the evolution of DTI maps with time (baseline/follow-up of ND patients)  Until now, only point values or local averages of MD and FA have been used  Sensitivity and specificity could be increased by more sophisticated analysis techniques: texture features (from cooccurrence and run-length matrices)  Images from S. Raffaele (A. Falini) (official collaboration letter) CAD for glioma: the stepchild comes to help… …ideas… …person(s)… histogram cooccurence matrix run-length matrix absolute gradient

6. Project details (2) by A.Bizzi, Modified DTI: isotropic and anisotropic water diffusion Isotropy map (e.g.: p map, MD map) Anisotropy map (e.g.: q map, FA map)

7. How much, and who! “Missioni Interne”: 15 K€ (2 meetings/yr for three persons; congress participation; travelling to S.Raffaele – Milan) “Missioni Estere”: 4 K€ “Materiale Inventariabile”: 4 K€  mass memory (3 · external Lacie 2 TB RAID Network 2 Gigabit Ethernet / Usb = 3 · 350 € = 1050 €)  networking (3 · switch with uplink, fiber, 16 ports = 3 · 200 € = 600 €)  portable pc: 1200 €  Others “Materiale di Consumo”: 2 K€ ………………………………………………………..Total amount: 25K€ Giorgio De Nunzio - RIC - Univ Salento, Dip.to Scienza dei Materiali - 80% Rosella Cataldo - RIC - Univ Salento, Dip.to Scienza dei Materiali - 70% Maurizio Quarta - RIC - Univ Salento, Dip.to Matematica - 50% Alessandra Carlà - BORSISTA - INFN - 100% Marco Peccarisi - DOTT - Univ Salento, Dip.to Fisica - 50% (Marina Donativi, research fellow until november, possibly with us next year…)