Summary
Objectives: The objective of this work is to present the software tool ANTONIA, which has been
developed to facilitate a quantitative analysis of perfusion-weighted MRI (PWI) datasets
in general as well as the subsequent multi-parametric analysis of additional datasets
for the specific purpose of acute ischemic stroke patient dataset evaluation.
Methods: Three different methods for the analysis of DSC or DCE PWI datasets are currently
implemented in ANTONIA, which can be case-specifically selected based on the study
protocol. These methods comprise a curve fitting method as well as a deconvolution-based
and deconvolution-free method integrating a previously defined arterial input function.
The perfusion analysis is extended for the purpose of acute ischemic stroke analysis
by additional methods that enable an automatic atlas-based selection of the arterial
input function, an analysis of the perfusion-diffusion and DWI-FLAIR mismatch as well
as segmentation-based volumetric analyses.
Results: For reliability evaluation, the de-scribed software tool was used by two ob-servers
for quantitative analysis of 15 data-sets from acute ischemic stroke patients to extract
the acute lesion core volume, FLAIR ratio, perfusion-diffusion mismatch volume with
manually as well as automatically selected arterial input functions, and follow-up
lesion volume. The results of this evaluation revealed that the described software
tool leads to highly reproducible results for all parameters if the automatic arterial
input function selection method is used.
Conclusion: Due to the broad selection of processing methods that are available in the software
tool, ANTONIA is especially helpful to support image-based perfusion and acute ischemic
stroke research projects.
Keywords
Magnetic resonance imaging - cerebrovascular stroke - brain mapping - computer- assisted
image processing
