Systematic protocol to identify 'clinical controls' for paediatric neuroimaging research from clinically acquired brain MRIs.
Authors
Affiliations (8)
Affiliations (8)
- The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
- University of Pennsylvania Department of Psychiatry, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
- Lifespan Brain Institute (LiBI) of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and Penn Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
- The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Department of Biomedical and Health Informatics, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
- Penn Lifespan Informatics and Neuroimaging Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
- The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Department of Radiology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
- University of Pennsylvania Department of Radiology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
- The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA [email protected].
Abstract
Progress at the intersection of artificial intelligence and paediatric neuroimaging necessitates large, heterogeneous datasets to generate robust and generalisable models. Retrospective analysis of clinical brain MRI scans offers a promising avenue to augment prospective research datasets, leveraging the extensive repositories of scans routinely acquired by hospital systems in the course of clinical care. Here, we present a systematic protocol for identifying 'scans with limited imaging pathology' through machine-assisted manual review of radiology reports. The protocol employs a standardised grading scheme developed with expert neuroradiologists and implemented by non-clinician graders. Categorising scans based on the presence or absence of significant pathology and image quality concerns facilitates the repurposing of clinical brain MRI data for brain research. Such an approach has the potential to harness vast clinical imaging archives-exemplified by over 250 000 brain MRIs at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia-to address demographic biases in research participation, to increase sample size and to improve replicability in neurodevelopmental imaging research. Ultimately, this protocol aims to enable scalable, reliable identification of clinical control brain MRIs, supporting large-scale, generalisable neuroimaging studies of typical brain development and neurogenetic conditions. Studies using datasets generated from this protocol will be disseminated in peer-reviewed journals and at academic conferences.