Differences between revisions 33 and 34
Deletions are marked like this. Additions are marked like this.
Line 2: Line 2:
PETSurfer provides a set of tools within FreeSurfer for end-to-end integrated MRI-PET analysis, including motion correction, PET-MRI registration, reference region kinetic modeling (MRTM1, MRTM2, Logan), and partial volume correction (PVC), and group analysis in ROI, volume, and surface spaces. The kinetic modeling is made easier by integration with FreeSurfer-defined regions of interest. The PVC tools can be used in any context where PVC is needed (eg, ASL). PVC methods include the Symmetric Geometric Transfer Matrix (SGTM), two-compartment model (also known as the Meltzer Method), three-compartment model (also known as the Muller-Gartner (MG) Method), region-based voxel-wise (RBV). SGTM is used for ROI analysis where as the others are used for voxel-wise analysis. All PVC implementations also account for the volume fraction effect (VFE). The voxel-wise output can then be analyzed on the cortical surface or in the volume.  

Please cite these papers when preparing manuscripts:
PETSurfer provides a set of tools within FreeSurfer for end-to-end integrated MRI-PET analysis, including motion correction, PET-MRI registration, reference region kinetic modeling (MRTM1, MRTM2, Logan), and partial volume correction (PVC), and group analysis in ROI, volume, and surface spaces. The kinetic modeling is made easier by integration with FreeSurfer-defined regions of interest. The PVC tools can be used in any context where PVC is needed (eg, ASL). PVC methods include the Symmetric Geometric Transfer Matrix (SGTM), two-compartment model (also known as the Meltzer Method), three-compartment model (also known as the Muller-Gartner (MG) Method), region-based voxel-wise (RBV). SGTM is used for ROI analysis where as the others are used for voxel-wise analysis. All PVC implementations also account for the volume fraction effect (VFE). The voxel-wise output can then be analyzed on the cortical surface or in the volume.

For voxel-wise applications, PETsurfer can do standard whole-brain volumetric analysis, but the instructions below use the "Three-Space Approach". In this approach, the cortical and subcortical GM are analyzed separately (cortex is analyzed in the left and right hemispheres separately making the number of spaces equal to 3). It is done in this way to be able to exploit surface-based operations for cortical regions. This includes surface-based (2D) smoothing, which allows spatial smoothing without exacerbating partial volume effects as when 3D volumetric smoothing is used. This improves kinetic modeling significantly but helps with uptake studies. When performing PVC with MG, it is necessary to use a surface-based approach as MG with 3D smoothing is invalid.

If you use PETsurfer, please cite these paper
s:

PETSurfer provides a set of tools within FreeSurfer for end-to-end integrated MRI-PET analysis, including motion correction, PET-MRI registration, reference region kinetic modeling (MRTM1, MRTM2, Logan), and partial volume correction (PVC), and group analysis in ROI, volume, and surface spaces. The kinetic modeling is made easier by integration with FreeSurfer-defined regions of interest. The PVC tools can be used in any context where PVC is needed (eg, ASL). PVC methods include the Symmetric Geometric Transfer Matrix (SGTM), two-compartment model (also known as the Meltzer Method), three-compartment model (also known as the Muller-Gartner (MG) Method), region-based voxel-wise (RBV). SGTM is used for ROI analysis where as the others are used for voxel-wise analysis. All PVC implementations also account for the volume fraction effect (VFE). The voxel-wise output can then be analyzed on the cortical surface or in the volume.

For voxel-wise applications, PETsurfer can do standard whole-brain volumetric analysis, but the instructions below use the "Three-Space Approach". In this approach, the cortical and subcortical GM are analyzed separately (cortex is analyzed in the left and right hemispheres separately making the number of spaces equal to 3). It is done in this way to be able to exploit surface-based operations for cortical regions. This includes surface-based (2D) smoothing, which allows spatial smoothing without exacerbating partial volume effects as when 3D volumetric smoothing is used. This improves kinetic modeling significantly but helps with uptake studies. When performing PVC with MG, it is necessary to use a surface-based approach as MG with 3D smoothing is invalid.

If you use PETsurfer, please cite these papers:

Greve, D. N., Svarer, C., Fisher, P. M., Feng, L., Hansen, A. E., Baare, W., ... & Knudsen, G. M. (2014). Cortical surface-based analysis reduces bias and variance in kinetic modeling of brain PET data. Neuroimage, 92, 225-236.

Greve, D. N., Salat, D. H., Bowen, S. L., Izquierdo-Garcia, D., Schultz, A. P., Catana, C., ... & Johnson, K. A. (2016). Different partial volume correction methods lead to different conclusions: An 18 F-FDG-PET study of aging. NeuroImage, 132, 334-343.

1. Run FreeSurfer on Anatomical MRI

In all cases, you will need a T1-weighted MRI of your subject of sufficient quality to run in FreeSurfer. FreeSurfer analysis (recon-all) must be done first; you should QA the FS analysis before proceeding with PETsurrfer. If possible, perform MRI gradient distortion correction (grad_unwarp) of the MRI before running recon-all. If you want to use the CVS non-linear volumetic registration, then make sure to run mri_cvs_register --mov subject --template cvs_avg35_inMNI152; this may take 12 hour or so. After that, follow the steps below.

2. Create a segmentation for the GTM (this is an extension of the FS recon-all analysis)

gtmseg --s subject

where "subject" is the name of the FreeSurfer subject when you ran recon-all. This creates a high-resolution segmentation (gtmseg.mgz) in the FS folder used to run the PVC methods. This should take about an hour or two. gtmseg.mgz will use aseg.mgz for subcortical structures, ?h.aparc.annot for cortical structures, and will estimate some extra-cerebral structures. There are ways to customize this segmentation to use different ROI definitions (eg, aparc.a2009s instead of aparc).

3. Register your PET image with the anatomical

mri_coreg --s subject --mov template.nii.gz --reg template.reg.lta

where template.nii.gz is the template image for your PET data. If your PET data only has one frame (eg, an SUV image), then that will be your template. If your PET data has multiple frames (ie, dynamic), then you will need to create the template from the dynamic data. This can be done by extracting a single frame (mri_convert pet.nii.gz --frame frameno template.nii.gz) or averaging all the time frames together (eg, mri_concat pet.nii.gz --mean --o template.nii.gz). It might make sense to do a time-weighted average rather than simple average, but we do not have a tool to do that easily, but you can do it in matlab. For parallel operation, add --threads N where N is the number of CPUs you want to use.

You should check the registration with:

tkregisterfv --mov template.nii.gz --reg template.reg.lta --surfs

If you are not using PVC, you can use the template.reg.lta to sample the PET volume onto the surface using mri_vol2surf, then apply standard surface-based analysis.

4. ROI Analysis, Setting Up Reference Regions for KM, and Apply Partial Volume Correction (if using)

mri_gtmpvc --i pet.nii.gz --reg template.reg.lta --psf FWHM --seg gtmseg.mgz
 --default-seg-merge  --auto-mask 1 .01 --mgx .01 --o gtmpvc.output

--psf FWHM is the full-width/half-max of the the point-spread function (PSF) of the scanner as measured in image space (also known as the burring function). The blurring function depends on the scanner and reconstruction method; here it is modeled as an isotropic Gaussian filter of the given FWHM. Eg, an HR+ is typically about 6mm. This parameter has nothing to do with applying smoothing. Set this to 0 to turn off PVC. If you don't know what to set this to, ask your PET physicist.
--seg gtmseg.mgz is the segmentation created with gtmseg
--default-seg-merge will merge several segmentations, eg, all the ventricular CSF segments will be merged into one ROI
--auto-mask 1 .01 will create a mask to exclude voxels from the analysis (saves time). Output volumes will be reduced to a bounding box around this mask (saves space)
--mgx .01 Run Muller-Gartner analysis. 01 is the GM threshold. Only necessary if you want to do a voxel-wise analysis.
--o gtmpvc.output This is the output folder.

If you do not want to perform PVC, you can just run

mri_gtmpvc --i pet.nii.gz --reg template.reg.lta --seg gtmseg.mgz
 --default-seg-merge  --auto-mask 1.01 --no-tfe --o gtmpvc.output

The --no-tfe will turn off correction for the tissue fraction effect (TFE), which is a type of PVC.

There will be many files in the output folder some of which are described here:

gtm.stats.dat is an easy to read text file where each row is an ROI, something like:

9 17 Left-Hippocampus subcort_gm 473 174.083 1.406 0.1216

9 = ninth row
17 = index for ROI
Left-Hippocampus = name of ROI
subcort_gm = tissue class
473 = number of PET voxels in the ROI
174 = variance reduction factor for ROI (based on GLM/SGTM)
1.406 = PVC uptake of ROI relative to Pons
0.1216 = resdiual varaince across voxels in the ROI

By default, this will scale by the intensity in pons. If you do not want scaling (eg, when doing a dynamic analysis), add --no-rescale

gtm.nii.gz is a nifti file with each "voxel" being an ROI. The value is the PVC uptake of ROI relative to Pons. For single time point data, this will be totally redundant with gtm.stats.dat. Use of the NIFTI format makes it easy to concatenate (mri_concat) these files together for group analysis (mri_glmfit).

nopvc.nii.gz - same interpretation as gtm.nii.gz except that the values have not been PVCed in any way. If you are not performing PVC, then this will be the same aseg gtm.nii.gz

mgx.{ctxgm,subctxgm,gm} - these are the voxel-wise values corrected using the "extended" Muller-Gartner method. ctxgm is cortical GM, subctxgm is the subcortical GM, and gm is all GM. These volumes will be of the same resolution as the input PET but the field of view will be reduced to that of a bounding box around the mask.

aux - this subfolder has auxiliary data that are often not of immediate use to the user. The exception is bbpet2anat.lta. This is a registration file that can be used to map the output PET volume (in the mask bounding box) to the anatomical space. This file should be used when mapping the volume to the surface, etc.

If you are doing dynamic (kinetic) analysis, then add the following arguments when running mri_gtmpvc:

--km-ref 8 47 --km-hb 11 12 13 50 51 52 --no-rescale

--km-ref 8 47 specifies the ROIs to use as the reference region for the MRTM models. 8 and 47 are the cerebellar hemisphers as found in $SUBJECTS_DIR/subject/mri/gtmseg.ctab (see also $FREESURFER_HOME/FreeSurferColorLUT.txt). This creates the file km.ref.tac.dat with the reference value for each time point.

--km-hb 11 12 13 50 51 52 specifies the ROIs to use as the high-binding region if using MRTM2. This creates km.hb.tac.nii.gz with the value for the high-binding region for each time point.

5. Kinetic Modeling (KM). KM is done with either MRTM1, MRTM2, or non-invasive Logan.

To run MRTM1 (which must be run prior to MRTM2):

mri_glmfit --y km.hb.tac.nii.gz --mrtm1 km.ref.tac.dat time.dat --o mrtm1 --no-est-fwhm --nii.gz

where time.dat is a simple ASCII text file with the acquisition time (in seconds) of each time point in the time activity curve (TAC). This will create a folder called mrtm1 in which will be a file called k2prime.dat. The value of k2prime will be used in the MRTM2 analysis below

For the MRTM2 analysis

set k2p = `cat mrtm1/k2prime.dat`
mri_glmfit --y gtm.nii.gz --mrtm2 km.ref.tac.dat time.dat $k2p --o mrtm2 --no-est-fwhm --nii.gz

This will create a folder called mrtm2 in which the bp.nii.gz will be the non-displaceable binding potential (BPND) for each ROI.

For Logan,

mri_glmfit --y gtm.nii.gz --logan km.ref.tac.dat time.dat tstar --o logan --no-est-fwhm --nii.gz

where tstar is the time to equilibration in seconds.

6. Surface-based analysis

Details of surface-based analysis are available in other locations in the wiki, but here is basically what you do.

If you are not using PVC, then

mri_vol2surf --mov pet.nii.gz --reg template.reg.lta --hemi lh
--projfrac 0.5 --o lh.pet.fsaverage.sm00.nii.gz --cortex
--trgsubject fsaverage

This command samples it onto the surface of fsaverage via the individual subject's surface. --cortex says to mask out non-cortical regions in the medial wall. --projfrac 0.5 says to sample halfway between the white and pial surfaces (ie, the middle of cortex). If you want to average over the cortical ribbon, you can use --projfrac-avg .2 .8 .1, which says to start 20% into the ribbon, sample every 10%, and stop at 80% of the thickness. pet.nii.gz is your input pet volume. The output is the lh.pet.fsaverage.sm00.nii.gz, which is a surface overlay.

When using PVC, the mgx.ctxgm.nii.gz is used, but the commands will apply to any of the volumes in the GTM output folder. Sample the mgx volume onto the left hemisphere surface

mri_vol2surf --mov mgx.ctxgm.nii.gz --reg aux/bbpet2anat.lta --hemi lh
--projfrac 0.5 --o lh.mgx.ctxgm.fsaverage.sm00.nii.gz --cortex
--trgsubject fsaverage

This is the same command as for no PVC, just changing the input to be the MGX volume and changing the name out of the output surface overlay.

If you are not doing kinetic modeling, concatenate all your subjects together into a stack file

mri_concat subj1/lh.mgx.ctxgm.fsaverage.sm00.nii.gz subj2/lh.mgx.ctxgm.fsaverage.sm00.nii.gz
...
--o all.lh.mgx.ctxgm.fsaverage.sm00.nii.gz --prune

For no PVC, just use the lh.pet.fsaverage.sm00.nii.gz files instead.

Smooth on the surface

mris_fwhm --smooth-only --i all.lh.mgx.ctxgm.fsaverage.sm00.nii.gz
--fwhm 5 --o all.lh.mgx.ctxgm.fsaverage.sm05.nii.gz --cortex --s fsaverage --hemi lh

For no PVC, just use the all.lh.pet.fsaverage.sm00.nii.gz files instead and call the output all.lh.pet.fsaverage.sm05.nii.gz

Run group analysis GLM

mri_glmfit --y all.lh.mgx.ctxgm.fsaverage.sm05.nii.gz --surface fsaverage lh --fsgd your.fsgd ...

For no PVC, just use the all.lh.pet.fsaverage.sm05.nii.gz

Note: when running correction for multiple comparisons (mri_glmfit-sim), it is highly recommended that permutation be used.

For the kinetic modeling MRTM2 surface-based analysis, lh.mgx.ctxgm.fsaverage.sm00.nii.gz (or No PVC equivalent) is the surface-based TAC for the individual sampled onto fsaverage. Smooth (mris_fwhm) this file rather that concatenating across subject. Then use the smoothed file as input to the MRTM2 analysis:

set k2p = `cat mrtm1/k2prime.dat`
mri_glmfit --y lh.mgx.ctxgm.fsaverage.sm05.nii.gz  --mrtm2 km.ref.tac.dat time.dat $k2p --o mrtm2.lh.sm05 --no-est-fwhm --nii.gz --surface fsaverage lh

This will create mrtm2.lh.sm05/bp.nii.gz.

These can be concatenated across subject, eg,

mri_concat subj1/mrtm2.lh.sm05/bp.nii.gz subj2/mrtm2.lh.sm05/bp.nii.gz ... --o all.mrtm2.lh.sm05.bp.nii.gz --prune

Do not perform another round of smoothing on this output. If you want more smoothing, redo the smoothing of the TACs.

Then run group analysis with mri_glmfit with all.mrtm2.lh.sm05.bp.nii.gz as input.

mri_glmfit --y all.mrtm2.lh.sm05.bp.nii.gz --surface fsaverage lh --fsgd your.fsgd

7. Subcortical volume-based analysis.

7.1. Resample into the volumetric atlas space (MNI305 or MNI152)

Note: these commands will mask to just subcortical GM (cortical GM is analyzed on the surface). They are shown with the MGX volume, but you can use the input too.

Option 1: Sample into the 2mm space of the MNI305 with an AFFINE transform

mri_vol2vol --mov subctxgm.nii.gz --reg aux/bbpet2anat.lta --tal --talres 2  --o subctxgm.mni305.2mm.sm00.nii.gz

When not using PVC, use --mov pet.nii.gz --reg template.reg.lta instead.

Option 2: Sample into the 2mm space of the MNI152 with the non-linear CVS transform

mri_vol2vol --gcam subctxgm.nii.gz aux/bbpet2anat.lta $SUBJECTS_DIR/$subject/cvs/final_CVSmorph_tocvs_avg35_inMNI152.m3z $FREESURFER_HOME/subjects/cvs_avg35_inMNI152/mri.2mm/register.lta 0 1 subctxgm.cvs.2mm.sm00.nii.gz

When not using PVC:

mri_vol2vol --gcam pet.nii.gz template.reg.lta $SUBJECTS_DIR/$subject/cvs/final_CVSmorph_tocvs_avg35_inMNI152.m3z $FREESURFER_HOME/subjects/cvs_avg35_inMNI152/mri.2mm/register.lta 0 1 subctxgm.cvs.2mm.sm00.nii.gz

7.2. Smooth in 3D within SubCortical GM

This command shows 5mm, but it could be another value. Also, the commands below show mni305, but it could be cvs instead. Substitute the No PVC volume as needed.

mri_fwhm --smooth-only --i subctxgm.mni305.2mm.sm00.nii.gz --fwhm 5 \
--o subctxgm.mni305.2mm.sm05.nii.gz \
--mask $FREESURFER_HOME/subjects/fsaverage/mri.2mm/subcort.mask.mgz

If not doing kinetic modeling, then the subctxgm.mni305.2mm.sm05.nii.gz can be mri_concat together for group analysis.

If doing KM, then

set k2p = `cat mrtm1/k2prime.dat`
mri_glmfit --y subctxgm.mni305.2mm.sm05.nii.gz  --mrtm2
km.ref.tac.dat time.dat $k2p --o mrtm2.subctxgm.mni305.2mm.sm05 --no-est-fwhm --nii.gz

This will create mrtm2.mni305.2mm.sm05/bp.nii.gz. These can be concatenated across subject, eg,

mri_concat subj1/mrtm2.mni305.2mm.sm05/bp.nii.gz
subj2/mrtm2.mni305.2mm.sm05/bp.nii.gz
...
--o all.mrtm2.mni305.2mm.sm05.bp.nii.gz  --prune

Do not perform another round of smoothing on this output. If you want more smoothing, redo the smoothing of the TACs.

Then run group analysis with mri_glmfit with all.mrtm2.mni305.2mm.sm05.bp.nii.gz as input.

mri_glmfit --y all.mrtm2.mni305.2mm.sm05.bp.nii.gz  --fsgd your.fsgd ...

Note: when running correction for multiple comparisons (mri_glmfit-sim), it is highly recommended that permutation be used.

PetSurfer (last edited 2023-12-07 16:43:39 by DougGreve)