Box-and-whisker plots of plasma clusterin concentration.

<p>The boxes represent the 25% quartile, median and 75% quartile and the whiskers show the mean +/− standard deviation. Plasma clusterin was significantly higher in depressed patients compared to controls, AD, DLB, and FTD subjects (p<0.001).</p

Subject demographics and plasma protein levels.

<p><a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0029868#pone-0029868-t001" target="_blank">Table 1</a>. Values are given in ng/L, except for ICAM-1, IGFBP-6, PARC and RANTES for which concentrations are given in µg/L.</p><p>When comparing AD vs 1) Controls, 2) Depression and 3) other dementias the following significant changes were observed:</p>a<p>AD vs control p = 0.01,</p>b<p>AD vs depression p<0.001, AD vs other dementias p = 0.01.</p>c<p>AD vs depression p = 0.034.</p>d<p>AD vs control p<0.001,</p>e<p>AD vs depression p = 0.001.</p>f<p>AD vs control p = 0.004.</p>g<p>AD vs control p<0.001.</p>h<p>AD vs control p = 0.011 (Kruskal–Wallis one-way analysis of variance by ranks followed by Mann-Whitney <i>U</i> test).</p><p>Abbreviations: Depr, depression; AD, Alzheimers disease; FTD, frontotemporal lobe dementia; VaD, vascular dementia; PDD, Parkinson's disease with dementia; DLB = dementia with Lewy bodies.</p

Multidimensional scaling plots (MDS) for the data.

<p>The left figure shows a MDS projection to 2 dimensions, using all 18 proteins, for the AD and the Control groups. The right figure is the corresponding plot for the AD and the other dementias group.</p

Subject demographics and plasma clusterin levels.

*<p>p<0.001 when comparing Depr. with controls, AD, DLB or FTD using Kruskal–Wallis one-way analysis of variance by ranks followed by Mann-Whitney U tests.</p

Correlation between plasma clusterin levels and Mini-Mental-State Examination (MMSE) scores in AD patients.

<p>The Pearson correlation (adjusting for age and gender) between clusterin concentration and MMSE equals 0.196 suggesting that levels of clusterin weakly correlate with improved cognition as demonstrated by increasing MMSE score (p<0.05).</p

Comparison of image contrasts.

<p>A: Acquired without diffusion encoding. B: Acquired using a high b-value. C: Extrapolated using the CHARMED model. D: Extrapolated using the proposed method with CSF correction. The two bottom rows show magnifications of anterior segments of the brain for two diffusion encoding directions. The yellow lines show the outline of the brain at a fixed position across all of the images. Note how the anterior rim of CSF is completely attenuated in the high b-value image (compare A and B). Both extrapolation methods yielded images with gross contrast similar to the acquired images. However, the CHARMED model introduced a shift in the outline of the brain for some encoding directions (compare outlines between bottom two rows in column C). For the proposed method, the outline of the brain did not vary substantially with encoding direction (column D).</p

Effect of the registration error on tractography based on high b-value data.

<p>Panel A shows the mean diffusivity map of a patient with atrophy. Panels B–D shows a zoomed in section, delineated in panel A. Point clouds in white represent a coronal cross section of the retrosplenial cingulum obtained from tractography using high b-value HARDI data. The tract points are overlaid on top of a colour FA-volume, which was calculated from data acquired with low b-values. When using data corrected with the conventional method (panel B), the point cloud appears in a region approximately two voxels above the expected region (green voxels). Data corrected with the CHARMED-based extrapolation method resulted in a point cloud slightly below the expected region (panel C). For data processed with the CSF-corrected extrapolation-based motion and eddy-current correction the point cloud corresponds well to the anatomical structure (panel D).</p

Effect of motion and eddy-current correction method on group comparison.

<p>* p < 0.05</p><p>** p < 0.01 (multivariate analysis correcting for age)</p><p>Results are presented as mean (standard deviation), and were for the left pair of columns obtained using conventional motion and eddy-current correction (C-MEC) whereas the right pair of columns show values obtained using extrapolation-based motion and eddy-current correction. Significant differences were observed more frequently between the healthy controls and PDD patients when using the extrapolation-based correction. Results were similar but not identical when each hemisphere was compared separately.</p

Illustration of the registration error between low and high b-value volumes.

<p>The left and middle columns show FA-volumes obtained from a low and a high b-value data set, respectively, processed using the conventional motion and eddy-current correction method (C-MEC). The mismatch between the two data sets becomes apparent when the position of the corpus callosum and surrounding tracts (second, third, and fourth row) are compared to a fixed position indicated by the red line. The third column shows FA projections from high b-value data processed using the CSF-corrected extrapolation-based motion and eddy-current corrections (EB-MEC), where no apparent mismatch between the low and high b-value volumes is visible.</p

Mean kurtosis (MW) in the retrosplenial segment of the cingulum.

<p>The swarm plots show parameters obtained using the conventional and extrapolation-based methods in the healthy controls and PDD patient group. A significant difference was observed for the CSF-corrected extrapolation-based method (<i>p</i> = 0.018), which vanished for the data corrected using the conventional method (<i>p</i> = 0.84). The extrapolation-based method also resulted in higher values of MW.</p