Annual Report of the Town of Monson Maine by the Municipal Officers including Report of Superintendent of Schools for the Municipal Year 1930-1931

Original scanned reports courtesy of Monson Historical Societ

ISLES 2015 - A public evaluation benchmark for ischemic stroke lesion segmentation from multispectral MRI

Ischemic stroke is the most common cerebrovascular disease, and its diagnosis, treatment, and study relies on non-invasive imaging. Algorithms for stroke lesion segmentation from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) volumes are intensely researched, but the reported results are largely incomparable due to different datasets and evaluation schemes. We approached this urgent problem of comparability with the Ischemic Stroke Lesion Segmentation (ISLES) challenge organized in conjunction with the MICCAI 2015 conference. In this paper we propose a common evaluation framework, describe the publicly available datasets, and present the results of the two sub-challenges: Sub-Acute Stroke Lesion Segmentation (SISS) and Stroke Perfusion Estimation (SPES). A total of 16 research groups participated with a wide range of state-of-the-art automatic segmentation algorithms. A thorough analysis of the obtained data enables a critical evaluation of the current state-of-the-art, recommendations for further developments, and the identification of remaining challenges. The segmentation of acute perfusion lesions addressed in SPES was found to be feasible. However, algorithms applied to sub-acute lesion segmentation in SISS still lack accuracy. Overall, no algorithmic characteristic of any method was found to perform superior to the others. Instead, the characteristics of stroke lesion appearances, their evolution, and the observed challenges should be studied in detail. The annotated ISLES image datasets continue to be publicly available through an online evaluation system to serve as an ongoing benchmarking resource (www.isles-challenge.org).Peer reviewe

Recording and stimulation of the pathologic brain cavity wall in a rat model for thalamic syndrome

De Vloo P., Rangarajan J.R., Crijns E., Bertrand A., Nuttin B.J., ''Recording and stimulation of the pathologic brain cavity wall in a rat model for thalamic syndrome'', American Society for Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery (ASSFN) biennial meeting, June 18-21, 2016, Chicago, IL, USA.status: publishe

Deep brain stimulation targeting the thalamic cavity wall in a rat model for thalamic syndrome

De Vloo P., Rangarajan J.R., Crijns E., Bertrand A., Nuttin B.J., ''Deep brain stimulation targeting the thalamic cavity wall in a rat model for thalamic syndrome'', Stereotactic and functional neurosurgery, 2016 (22nd congress of the European Society for Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery - ESSFN 2016, September 28 - October 1, 2016, Madrid, Spain).status: publishe

Electrical stimulation of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis reduces anxiety in a rat model

We recently showed that deep brain stimulation (DBS) in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST) reduces obsessions, compulsions and associated anxiety in patients suffering from severe, treatment-refractory obsessive-compulsive disorder. Here, we investigated the anxiolytic effects of electrical BST stimulation in a rat model of conditioned anxiety, unrelated to obsessions or compulsions. Two sets of stimulation parameters were evaluated. Using fixed settings at 100 Hz, 40 µs and 300 µA (Set A), we observed elevated freezing and startle levels, whereas stimulation at 130 Hz, 220 µs and individually tailored amplitudes (Set B) appeared to reduce freezing. In a follow-up experiment, we evaluated the anxiolytic potential of Set B more extensively, by adding a lesion group and an additional day of stimulation. We found that electrical stimulation significantly reduced freezing, but not to the same extent as lesions. Neither lesions nor stimulation of the BST affected motor behavior or unconditioned anxiety in an open field test. In summary, electrical stimulation of the BST was successful in reducing contextual anxiety in a rat model, without eliciting unwanted motor effects. Our findings underline the therapeutic potential of DBS in the BST for disorders which are hallmarked by pathological anxiety. Further research will be necessary to assess the translatability of these findings to the clinic.Luyck K., Tambuyzer T., Deprez M., Rangarajan J.R., Nuttin B., Luyten L., ''Electrical stimulation of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis reduces anxiety in a rat model'', Translational psychiatry, vol. 7, article e1033, 8 pp., February 14, 2017.status: publishe

Increased cortical volume revealed by atlas-based volumetry in a bigenic mouse model of alzheimer's disease

Govaerts K., Rangarajan J.R., Struys T., Van Leuven F., Dresselaers T., Himmelreich U., ''Increased cortical volume revealed by atlas-based volumetry in a bigenic mouse model of alzheimer's disease'', 7th annual meeting of the ISMRM Benelux Chapter, January 16, 2015, Ghent, Belgium.status: publishe

Assessment of variability in cerebral vasculature for neuro-anatomical surgery planning in rodent brain

Clinical and pre-clinical studies show that deep brain stimulation (DBS) of targeted brain regions by neurosurgical techniques ameliorate psychiatric disorder such as anorexia nervosa. Neurosurgical interventions in preclinical rodent brain are mostly accomplished manually with a 2D atlas. Considering both the large number of animals subjected to stereotactic surgical experiments and the associated imaging cost, feasibility of sophisticated pre-operative imaging based surgical path planning and/or robotic guidance is limited. Here, we spatially normalize vasculature information and assess the intra-strain variability in cerebral vasculature for a neurosurgery planning. By co-registering and subsequently building a probabilistic vasculature template in a standard space,1 we evaluate the risk of a user defined electrode trajectory damaging a blood vessel on its path. The use of such a method may not only be confined to DBS therapy in small animals, but also could be readily applicable to a wide range of stereotactic small animal surgeries like targeted injection of contrast agents and cell labeling applications.© 2011 SPIE.Rangarajan J.R., Van Kuyck K., Himmelreich U., Nuttin B., Suetens P., Maes F., ''Assessment of variability in cerebral vasculature for neuro-anatomical surgery planning in rodent brain'', SPIE medical imaging 2011 conference : biomedical applications in molecular, structural, and functional imaging, vol. 7965, February 12-17, 2011, Lake Buena Vista - Orlando, Florida, USA.status: publishe

A posteriori registration and subtraction of panoramic compared with intraoral radiography

OBJECTIVES: To demonstrate the feasibility of panoramic image subtraction for implant assessment. STUDY DESIGN: Three titanium implants were inserted into a fresh pig mandible. One intraoral and 2 panoramic images were obtained at baseline and after each of 6 incremental (0.3, 0.6, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5 mm) removals of bone. For each incremental removal of bone, the mandible was removed from and replaced in the holding device. Images representing incremental bone removals were registered by computer with the baseline images and subtracted. Assessment of the subtraction images was based on visual inspection and analysis of structured noise. RESULTS: Incremental bone removals were more visible in intraoral than in panoramic subtraction images; however, computer-based registration of panoramic images reduced the structured noise and enhanced the visibility of incremental removals. CONCLUSION: The feasibility of panoramic image subtraction for implant assessment was demonstrated

A voxel-wise, cascaded classification approach to ischemic stroke lesion segmentation

Automated localisation and segmentation of stroke lesions in patients is of great interest to clinicians and researchers alike. We propose a supervised method based on cascaded extremely randomised trees for lesion segmentation, working on a per voxel basis in native subject space. The proposed pipeline is evaluated in the MICCAI Ischemic Stroke Lesion Segmentation (ISLES) challenge, both with nested cross-validation on the training data as well as on independent, multi-centre test data. We obtained good performance although inter-subject variability is large, and reached 3rd place in the SPES sub-challenge.Robben D., Christiaens D., Rangarajan J.R., Gelderblom J., Joris P., Maes F., Suetens P., ''A voxel-wise, cascaded classification approach to stroke lesion segmentation'', Lecture notes in computer science - Brainlesion: Glioma, Multiple Sclerosis, Stroke and Traumatic Brain Injuries, vol. 9556, pp. 254-265, 2016 (Ischemic stroke lesion segmentation - ISLES challenge 2015, held in conjunction with MICCAI 2015., October 5, 2015, Munich, Germany) (3rd place in SPES subchallenge).status: publishe

Comparison of lentiviral and adeno-associated viral vectors for stable MRI reporter gene expression in the rodent brain

Vande Velde G., Rangarajan J.R., Dresselaers T., Ibrahimi A., Debyser Z., Baekelandt V., Himmelreich U., ''Comparison of lentiviral and adeno-associated viral vectors for stable MRI reporter gene expression in the rodent brain'', 2009 world molecular imaging congress, September 23-26, 2009, Montréal, Canada.status: publishe