BCN MedTech, Department of Information and Communication Technologies, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain.
BCNatal | Fetal Medicine Research Center (Hospital Clínic and Hospital Sant Joan de Déu), University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain; Institut d'Investigacions Biomédiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), Barcelona, Spain.
Comput Methods Programs Biomed. 2023 Mar;230:107334. doi: 10.1016/j.cmpb.2023.107334. Epub 2023 Jan 4.
The automatic segmentation of perinatal brain structures in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is of utmost importance for the study of brain growth and related complications. While different methods exist for adult and pediatric MRI data, there is a lack for automatic tools for the analysis of perinatal imaging.
In this work, a new pipeline for fetal and neonatal segmentation has been developed. We also report the creation of two new fetal atlases, and their use within the pipeline for atlas-based segmentation, based on novel registration methods. The pipeline is also able to extract cortical and pial surfaces and compute features, such as curvature, local gyrification index, sulcal depth, and thickness.
Results show that the introduction of the new templates together with our segmentation strategy leads to accurate results when compared to expert annotations, as well as better performances when compared to a reference pipeline (developing Human Connectome Project (dHCP)), for both early and late-onset fetal brains.
These findings show the potential of the presented atlases and the whole pipeline for application in both fetal, neonatal, and longitudinal studies, which could lead to dramatic improvements in the understanding of perinatal brain development.
磁共振成像（MRI）中围产期脑结构的自动分割对于研究脑生长和相关并发症至关重要。虽然存在用于成人和儿科 MRI 数据的不同方法，但缺乏用于围产期成像分析的自动工具。
在这项工作中，我们开发了一种新的胎儿和新生儿分割流水线。我们还报告了两个新的胎儿图谱的创建，并在基于图谱的分割流水线中使用了它们，这是基于新的配准方法。该流水线还能够提取皮质和软脑膜表面，并计算曲率、局部脑回指数、脑沟深度和厚度等特征。
结果表明，与专家注释相比，引入新模板和我们的分割策略可获得准确的结果，与参考流水线（开发人类连接组计划（dHCP））相比，无论是早期还是晚期胎儿大脑，都具有更好的性能。
这些发现表明，所提出的图谱和整个流水线具有应用于胎儿、新生儿和纵向研究的潜力，这可能会极大地促进对围产期大脑发育的理解。
