Distinct characteristics and severity of brain magnetic resonance imaging lesions in women and men with multiple sclerosis assessed using verified texture analysis measures

Zahra Hosseinpour; Olayinka Oladosu; Wei-Qiao Liu; G Bruce Pike; V Wee Yong; Luanne M Metz; Yunyan Zhang

doi:10.3389/fneur.2023.1213377

Distinct characteristics and severity of brain magnetic resonance imaging lesions in women and men with multiple sclerosis assessed using verified texture analysis measures

Front Neurol. 2023 Aug 10:14:1213377. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2023.1213377. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Zahra Hosseinpour¹, Olayinka Oladosu², Wei-Qiao Liu³, G Bruce Pike^{3

4

5}, V Wee Yong^{3

5}, Luanne M Metz^{3

5}, Yunyan Zhang^{3

4

5}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biomedical Engineering, Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada.
² Department of Neuroscience, Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada.
³ Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada.
⁴ Department of Radiology, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada.
⁵ Hotchkiss Brain Institute, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada.

Abstract

Background and goal: In vivo characterization of brain lesion types in multiple sclerosis (MS) has been an ongoing challenge. Based on verified texture analysis measures from clinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), this study aimed to develop a method to identify two extremes of brain MS lesions that were approximately severely demyelinated (sDEM) and highly remyelinated (hREM), and compare them in terms of common clinical variables.

Method: Texture analysis used an optimized gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) method based on FLAIR MRI from 200 relapsing-remitting MS participants. Two top-performing metrics were calculated: texture contrast and dissimilarity. Lesion identification applied a percentile approach according to texture values calculated: ≤ 25 percentile for hREM and ≥75 percentile for sDEM.

Results: The sDEM had a greater total normalized volume yet smaller average size, and worse MRI texture than hREM. In lesion distribution mapping, the two lesion types appeared to overlap largely in location and were present the most in the corpus callosum and periventricular regions. Further, in sDEM, the normalized volume was greater and in hREM, the average size was smaller in men than women. There were no other significant results in clinical variable-associated analyses.

Conclusion: Percentile statistics of competitive MRI texture measures may be a promising method for probing select types of brain MS lesion pathology. Associated findings can provide another useful dimension for improved measurement and monitoring of disease activity in MS. The different characteristics of sDEM and hREM between men and women likely adds new information to the literature, deserving further confirmation.

Keywords: brain MRI; gray-level co-occurrence matrix; lesion severity; multiple sclerosis; percentile thresholding; sex difference; texture analysis.

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), MS Society of Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and Alberta Innovates-Health Solution.