The 108th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America
By Beth Gilbert HealthDay Reporter
The annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America was held from Nov. 27 to Dec. 1 in Chicago and attracted nearly 25,000 participants from around the world, including radiologists, radiation oncologists, physicists in medicine, radiologic technologists, and other health care professionals. The conference featured scientific papers from a number of subspecialties covering the newest trends in radiological research, as well as education and informatics exhibits.
In one study, Wilson Xu, an M.D. candidate from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and colleagues used ultra-high-field 7T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study changes in the small vascular structures of the brain in different types of migraine.
The authors used ultra-high-field 7T MRI to view the brains of migraine patients and compared the findings to the most clinically available MRIs right now (which are mainly 3T or 1.5T). The researchers found that in the centrum semiovale (CSO), there was a statistically significant difference noted in the number of enlarged perivascular spaces (PVS) in patients with migraine compared with patients without migraine. In terms of other brain imaging findings, the researchers did not see a statistically significant difference between white matter hyperintensities (WMH) and cerebral microbleeds between patients with and without migraine. Meanwhile, in patients with migraine, the investigators did observe a significant association between enlarged PVS in the CSO and the severity of WMH.
“This study is a good first step towards identifying specific underlying causes of migraine, which could one day help us improve diagnosis and inform the development of individualized treatments. These findings are exciting because they suggest some kind of disruption in the waste clearance system of the brain in migraine; previous studies show many neurological disorders are associated with increased PVS,” Xu said. “Now, whether these changes cause migraine to develop or are a result of migraine is still unclear, as is the exact mechanism behind how migraine works or how PVS are implicated in migraine. Our goal is to continue using ultra-high-field 7T MRI for additional studies, this time with larger populations of patients, longer follow-up periods, and more migraine types so we can better understand what exactly the relationship is between these changes and migraine.”
In another study, Huang Lin, of the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, and colleagues identified biomarkers of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) using neuroimaging and a machine learning algorithm to help diagnose and target treatment more effectively.
The authors aimed to determine neuroimaging microstructural, morphological, and functional connectivity correlates of ADHD in adolescents and evaluate the applicability of a machine learning algorithm in predicting ADHD diagnosis. With information from the Adolescents Brain Cognitive Development database, multivariate analysis was performed to determine the association between ADHD and neuroimaging metrics, including brain volume, surface area, white matter integrity, and functional connectivity. The researchers observed neurostructural and functional changes in patients with ADHD, and these changes were strong enough to train an algorithm to predict ADHD diagnosis.
“ADHD has neurostructural and functional correlates and these findings could also be identified in our study on a populational level,” Lin said. “ADHD is a neurological disorder with brain correlates strong enough to perform machine learning on it.”
Johanna Luitjens, M.D., of the University of California in San Francisco, and colleagues found that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) may worsen knee inflammation among patients with osteoarthritis.
The researchers analyzed whether NSAID treatment influences the development or progression of synovitis and investigated whether cartilage imaging biomarkers, which reflect changes in osteoarthritis, were impacted by NSAID treatment. Specifically, the investigators compared 277 participants from the Osteoarthritis Initiative cohort with moderate-to-severe osteoarthritis and sustained NSAID treatment for at least one year to a group of 793 healthy control participants who were not treated with NSAIDs. All participants included in the study underwent 3T MRI of the knee at baseline and after four years. The researchers found that participants taking NSAIDs regularly for four years showed worse results with regard to various synovitis markers. In addition, markers indicating cartilage quality were found to be worse in the NSAID group compared with the control group.
“Our results suggest that synovitis and cartilage biomarkers worsened over four years. Therefore, especially regarding the use of drugs to reduce inflammation, it may be necessary to discuss NSAID treatment for osteoarthritis patients,” Luitjens said. “Our study suggests that NSAID treatment does not reduce joint inflammation in the knee. Ultimately, however, prospective, randomized studies must be performed in the future to provide conclusive evidence of the anti-inflammatory impact of NSAIDs and give patients insights into potential effects/side effects of long-term use of the drug.”
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