Whole Brain Source Separation for Neurodegeneration

Motivation: Cortex and spinal cord tissue are of interest in a variety of neurodegenerative diseases including Multiple Sclerosis (MS), Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). These regions are low in signal to noise ratio (SNR) and generate artifacts on quantitative susceptibility maps (QSMs). Goal(s): To demonstrate the maximum Spherical Mean Value (mSMV) algorithm as a tissue preserving initialization for susceptibility source separation. Approach: Whole brain source separation enabled by mSMV is applied to patients with MS, AD, and ALS. Results: The mSMV algorithm reconstructs the whole brain volume in source separations and generates susceptibility maps in agreement with existing methods. Impact: Whole brain source separation using the maximum Spherical Mean Value (mSMV) algorithm successfully preserves full tissue volume and produces susceptibility map in strong agreement with existing methods.