Vicki Huang
BME PhD Defense Presentation

Date: 2024-04-18
Time: 2:30 pm-4 pm
Location / Meeting Link: Winship C5012 / Meeting Link: https://zoom.us/j/97628781312

Committee Members:
Hyunsuk Shim, PhD (Advisor); Bree Eaton, MD/PhD; Brent Weinberg, MD/PhD; Candace Fleischer, PhD; Shella Keilholz, PhD


Title: Spectroscopic MRI in the Study and Clinical Translation of Pediatric High-Grade Glioma and Neurologic Disorders

Abstract:
Pediatric high-grade glioma (pHGG) is a highly aggressive disease with a 3-year overall survival of less than 30% due to its ill characterization and diffuse infiltration. Radiation therapy is a critical component of definitive therapy for treatment and management of this disease; however, defining the extent of tumor infiltration remains challenging using standard imaging techniques. Spectroscopic MRI (sMRI) is an advanced imaging modality capable of measuring endogenous metabolite concentrations in the brain. These metabolites and combinations of their ratios, in particular choline and N-acetylaspartate, can be used as highly sensitive biomarkers for metabolically active tumor. Despite its promising outlook, clinical adoption of sMRI has been limited in part due to complexity in post-processing data analysis. Therefore, the objectives of this dissertation are to: 1) evaluate the effects of sMRI-guided RT volumes and long-term treatment response compared to standard of care in pediatric HGG, 2) develop and optimize a deep-learning based accelerated spectral fitting method for long echo-time spectroscopic MRI for clinical use, and 3) lastly to improve detection of low-signal metabolites using a spectral integration approach while demonstrating use case in psychology applications. We have shown the feasibility of sMRI-guided treatment through successful integration into the clinical workflow in pHGG for not only RT planning, but longitudinal treatment response as well. The findings in this work have demonstrated the widespread capability of sMRI in neuro-applications and aid in the clinical translation of this technology.

Graduate Academic Office

Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology & Emory University

GradAO@bme.gatech.edu| 404-385-0124