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Vandekar, S.

Publications and source records attributed to Vandekar, S..

2 recordsLinked to original sources
bioRxiv2017

Linked dimensions of psychopathology and connectivity in functional brain networks

Neurobiological abnormalities associated with psychiatric disorders do not map well to existing diagnostic categories. High co-morbidity and overlapping symptom domains suggest dimensional circuit-level abnormalities that cut across clinical diagnoses. Here we sought to identify brain-based dimensions of psychopathology using multivariate sparse canonical correlation analysis (sCCA) in a sample of 663 youths imaged as part of the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort. This analysis revealed highly correlated patterns of functional connectivity and psychiatric symptoms. We found that four dimensions of psychopathology -- mood, psychosis, fear, and externalizing behavior -- were highly associated (r=0.68-0.71) with distinct patterns of functional dysconnectivity. Loss of network segregation between the default mode network and executive networks (e.g. fronto-parietal and salience) emerged as a common feature across all dimensions. Connectivity patterns linked to mood and psychosis became more prominent with development, and significant sex differences were present for connectivity patterns related to mood and fear. Critically, findings replicated in an independent dataset (n=336). These results delineate connectivity-guided dimensions of psychopathology that cut across traditional diagnostic categories, which could serve as a foundation for developing network-based biomarkers in psychiatry.

neuroscience↗
bioRxiv2017

MIMoSA: A Method for Inter-Modal Segmentation Analysis

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is crucial for in vivo detection and characterization of white matter lesions (WML) in multiple sclerosis. While these lesions have been studied for over two decades using MRI technology, automated segmentation remains challenging. Although the majority of statistical techniques for the automated segmentation of WML are based on a single imaging modality, recent advances have used multimodal techniques for identifying WML. Complementary imaging modalities emphasize different tissue properties, which can help identify and characterize interrelated features of lesions. However, prior work has ignored relationships between imaging modalities, which may be informative in this clinical context. To harness the coherent changes in these measurements, we utilized inter-modal coupling regression (IMCo) to estimate the covariance structure across modalities. We then used a local logistic regression, MIMoSA, which leverages new covariance features from IMCo regression as well as the mean structure of each imaging modality in order to model the probability that any voxel is part of a lesion. Finally, we introduced a novel thresholding algorithm to fully automate the estimation of the probability maps to generate fully automated segmentations masks for 94 subjects. To evaluate the performance of the automated segmentations generated using MIMoSA we compared results with gold standard manual segmentations. We demonstrate the superiority of MIMoSA to other automated segmentation techniques by comparing it to the OASIS algorithm as well as LesionTOADS. MIMoSA resulted in statistically significant improvement in lesion segmentation.

neuroscience↗