No Arabic abstract
Mechanical characterization of brain tissue has been investigated extensively by various research groups over the past fifty years. These properties are particularly important for modelling Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). In this research, we present the design and calibration of a High Rate Tension Device (HRTD) capable of performing tests up to a maximum strain rate of 90/s. We use experimental and numerical methods to investigate the effects of inhomogeneous deformation of porcine brain tissue during tension at different specimen thicknesses (4.0-14.0 mm), by performing tension tests at a strain rate of 30/s. One-term Ogden material parameters (mu = 4395.0 Pa, alpha = -2.8) were derived by performing an inverse finite element analysis to model all experimental data. A similar procedure was adopted to determine Youngs modulus (E= 11200 Pa) of the linear elastic regime. Based on this analysis, brain specimens of aspect ratio (diameter/thickness) S < 1.0 are required to minimise the effects of inhomogeneous deformation during tension tests.
During the first years of life, the human brain undergoes dynamic spatially-heterogeneous changes, involving differentiation of neuronal types, dendritic arborization, axonal ingrowth, outgrowth and retraction, synaptogenesis, and myelination. To better quantify these changes, this article presents a method for probing tissue microarchitecture by characterizing water diffusion in a spectrum of length scales, factoring out the effects of intra-voxel orientation heterogeneity. Our method is based on the spherical means of the diffusion signal, computed over gradient directions for a fixed set of diffusion weightings (i.e., b-values). We decompose the spherical mean series at each voxel into a spherical mean spectrum (SMS), which essentially encodes the fractions of spin packets undergoing fine- to coarse-scale diffusion processes, characterizing hindered and restricted diffusion stemming respectively from extra- and intra-neurite water compartments. From the SMS, multiple orientation distribution invariant indices can be computed, allowing for example the quantification of neurite density, microscopic fractional anisotropy ($mu$FA), per-axon axial/radial diffusivity, and free/restricted isotropic diffusivity. We show maps of these indices for baby brains, demonstrating that microscopic tissue features can be extracted from the developing brain for greater sensitivity and specificity to development related changes. Also, we demonstrate that our method, called spherical mean spectrum imaging (SMSI), is fast, accurate, and can overcome the biases associated with other state-of-the-art microstructure models.
Identification of white matter fiber tracts of the brain is crucial for delineating the tumor border during neurosurgery. A custom-built Mueller polarimeter was used in reflection configuration for the wide-field imaging of thick section of fixed human brain and fresh calf brain. The experimental images of azimuth of the fast optical axis of linear birefringent medium showed a strong correlation with the silver-stained sample histology image, which is the gold standard for ex-vivo brain fiber tract visualization. The polarimetric images of fresh calf brain tissue demonstrated the same trends in depolarization, scalar retardance and azimuth of the fast optical axis as seen in fixed human brain tissue. Thus, label-free imaging Mueller polarimetry shows promise as an efficient intra-operative modality for the visualization of healthy brain white matter fiber tracts, which could improve the accuracy of tumor border detection and, ultimately, patient outcomes.
During contraction the energy of muscle tissue increases due to energy from the hydrolysis of ATP. This energy is distributed across the tissue as strain-energy potentials in the contractile elements, strain-energy potential from the 3D deformation of the base-material tissue (containing cellular and ECM effects), energy related to changes in the muscles nearly incompressible volume and external work done at the muscle surface. Thus, energy is redistributed through the muscles tissue as it contracts, with only a component of this energy being used to do mechanical work and develop forces in the muscles line-of-action. Understanding how the strain-energy potentials are redistributed through the muscle tissue will help enlighten why the mechanical performance of whole muscle in its line-of-action does not match the performance that would be expected from the contractile elements alone. Here we demonstrate these physical effects using a 3D muscle model based on the finite element method. The tissue deformations within contracting muscle are large, and so the mechanics of contraction were explained using the principles of continuum mechanics for large deformations. We present simulations of a contracting medial gastrocnemius muscle, showing tissue deformations that mirror observations from MRI-based images. This paper tracks the redistribution of strain-energy potentials through the muscle tissue during isometric contractions, and shows how fibre shortening, pennation angle, transverse bulging and anisotropy in the stress and strain of the muscle tissue are all related to the interaction between the material properties of the muscle and the action of the contractile elements.
As bone and air produce weak signals with conventional MR sequences, segmentation of these tissues particularly difficult in MRI. We propose to integrate patch-based anatomical signatures and an auto-context model into a machine learning framework to iteratively segment MRI into air, bone and soft tissue. The proposed semantic classification random forest (SCRF) method consists of a training stage and a segmentation stage. During training stage, patch-based anatomical features were extracted from registered MRI-CT training images, and the most informative features were identified to train a series of classification forests with auto-context model. During segmentation stage, we extracted selected features from MRI and fed them into the well-trained forests for MRI segmentation. The DSC for air, bone and soft tissue obtained with proposed SCRF were 0.976, 0.819 and 0.932, compared to 0.916, 0.673 and 0.830 with RF, 0.942, 0.791 and 0.917 with U-Net. SCRF also demonstrated superior segmentation performances for sensitivity and specificity over RF and U-Net for all three structure types. The proposed segmentation technique could be a useful tool to segment bone, air and soft tissue, and have the potential to be applied to attenuation correction of PET/MRI system, MRI-only radiation treatment planning and MR-guided focused ultrasound surgery.
Knowledge of x-ray attenuation is essential for developing and evaluating x-ray imaging technologies. In mammography, measurement of breast density, dose estimation, and differentiation between cysts and solid tumours are example applications requiring accurate data on tissue attenuation. Published attenuation data are, however, sparse and cover a relatively wide range. To supplement available data we have previously measured the attenuation of cyst fluid and solid lesions using photon-counting spectral mammography. The present study aims to measure the attenuation of normal adipose and glandular tissue, and to measure the effect of formalin fixation, a major uncertainty in published data. A total of 27 tumour specimens, seven fibro-glandular tissue specimens, and 15 adipose tissue specimens were included. Spectral (energy-resolved) images of the samples were acquired and the image signal was mapped to equivalent thicknesses of two known reference materials, from which x-ray attenuation as a function of energy can be derived. The spread in attenuation between samples was relatively large, partly because of natural variation. The variation of malignant and glandular tissue was similar, whereas that of adipose tissue was lower. Formalin fixation slightly altered the attenuation of malignant and glandular tissue, whereas the attenuation of adipose tissue was not significantly affected. The difference in attenuation between fresh tumour tissue and cyst fluid was smaller than has previously been measured for fixed tissue, but the difference was still significant and discrimination of these two tissue types is still possible. The difference between glandular and malignant tissue was close-to significant; it is reasonable to expect a significant difference with a larger set of samples. [cropped]