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Traumatic Brain InjuryQALDNCT01022307

Quantitative Automated Lesion Detection of Traumatic Brain Injury

An observational study of Traumatic Brain Injury, run by VA Office of Research and Development at 1 site in United States.

Completed

Finished. The study has ended and is not enrolling. Results may be posted on the official record.

Official record
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Trial summary

The investigators propose to develop quantitative automated lesion detection (QALD) procedures to identify brain damage following traumatic brain injury more accurately than is possible with a normal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. These procedures require about 1 hour of imaging in an MRI scanner. Read more about this study

Who is it for?
Ages 18 to 50 yearsHealthy volunteers can take part
Conditions the study is for
Traumatic Brain Injury
How many people
212 participants
Where
1 siteUnited States
Study dates
May 2009to Oct 2014
Phase
Observational
Are there results?
Yes, posted in the registrySummary in the doctors' view

Key requirements

Who can take part, as listed by the sponsor. Only the study team can confirm whether you are eligible, so take this list to your doctor.

  • Ages 18 to 50 years
  • All sexes
  • Healthy volunteers accepted
  • Adult

Study population: Our targeted population is veterans from OEF/OIF. Other subjects will be recruited as needed to fulfill recruitment targets.

Who may be able to join

  • Control subjects from 18-50.
  • Patients from 18-50 who have suffered TBI.

Who cannot join

  • Substance abuse.
  • Irremedial sensory deficits (blindness, deafness).
  • Primary psychiatric disorder.
  • Neurological disease unrelated to TBI.

Trial locations and contacts

1 site in 1 country.

United States1 site
  • VA Northern California HCS

    Martinez, California, 94553

Other trials in United States

About this study

Official title: Quantitative Automated Lesion Detection of TBI

The investigators propose to develop quantitative automated lesion detection (QALD) procedures to identify brain damage following traumatic brain injury more accurately than is possible with a normal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. These procedures require about 1 hour of imaging in an MRI scanner. Subjects will also undergo about 2 hours of cognitive tests. The investigators will compare the results of the cognitive tests with those from MRI scanning to determine what brain regions are responsible for superior performance and for performance decrements.

Read the detailed description

Because of their non-focal nature, TBI-related brain lesions are difficult to detect and quantify with traditional MRI. In the current research program the investigators propose to develop quantitative automated lesion detection (QALD) procedures to (1) clarify the nature and distribution of tissue damage following mild, moderate and severe TBI (2) improve the capability of detecting, quantifying, and localizing TBI brain damage in individual patients and (3) correlate quantitative measures of brain damage in individual TBI patients with neuropsychological deficits in attention, memory, and executive function.

QALD detects abnormal tissue parameters in the diseased brain through statistical comparisons with a normative database. Preliminary results show that QALD is capable of detecting highly significant abnormalities in the brains of TBI patients with normal clinical MRI scans. QALD will be further enhanced and tested with a larger database and including brain images acquired with four different imaging sequences (T1, T2, DTI and fluid-attenuated inversion recovery or FLAIR) from 100 control subjects. Data analysis will incorporate advanced cortical surface mapping techniques to quantify gray matter tissue parameters and thickness in 34 distinct cortical regions in each hemisphere. In addition, cortical fiber projections will be quantified with DTI and FLAIR analysis of white matter lying below the cortical surface. Subcortical fiber tracts critical for complex cognitive operations will be analyzed with voxel-based morphometry and with improved region of interest algorithms to define fiber tract boundaries. Tissue properties in critical subcortical structures (e.g., the hippocampus) will be quantified after automatic parcellation of these brain regions. The investigators will also test the control subjects on a battery of neuropsychological tests (NPTs) and correlate variations in the size, myelination, and tissue properties of normal cortical and subcortical structures with cognitive performance. Then, the investigators will gather identical imaging data in 99 TBI patients divided into three groups (mild, moderate and severe TBI) in order to characterize the average pattern of damage caused by TBIs of different severity. Next, the investigators will quantify lesions in individual TBI patients and describe the variability of lesion patterns in the different severity groups. In parallel, the investigators will develop further multimodal analysis techniques to combine statistical information from different imaging sequences to improve lesion-detection sensitivity to co-localized abnormalities evident with different imaging protocols. In addition, the investigators will test patients with NPTs and analyze the relationship between brain damage, cognitive performance and self-assessments of outcome in order to improve the prognostic value of neuroradiological studies of TBI.

Keywords
behavioral data acquisition, MRI
Medical subject headings
Brain Injuries, Traumatic

What participants receive

What participants receive. In a randomised study each person is assigned to one group by chance.

Study groups in NCT01022307
Study groupRoleWhat they receive
Group 1: no history of TBI184 participants with no history of traumatic brain injury (TBI).
Group 2: with a history of TBI28 patients with a history of TBI. Most of these patients had suffered mild TBI.

What is being measured

The primary outcome is the main question the study is designed to answer.

  1. Performance on Trail-making Test, Part B

    z-score based on response time, regressed for age and computer use

    Measured: Single session generally several years after TBI depending on time of recruitment of subjects.

Timeline

From the start of the study to its completion; the mark is today. Estimated dates are the sponsor’s plan.

  1. First posted1 Dec 2009 (estimated)
  2. Study startMay 2009
  3. Primary completionOct 2014
  4. Study completionOct 2014

Resources

More details

For doctors and researchers: how the study is designed, who runs it, and its registry IDs.

Study design
Study type
Observational
Observational model
Case-control
Time perspective
Retrospective
Enrolment
212 participants (actual)
IDs, dates and publications
ClinicalTrials.gov ID
NCT01022307
Sponsor's protocol ID
B6120-R
Acronym
QALD
Status last verified
Dec 2015
First submitted
8 May 2009
Last updated
14 Jan 2016
Data monitoring committee
No

Publications

  • Alho K, Rinne T, Herron TJ, Woods DL. Stimulus-dependent activations and attention-related modulations in the auditory cortex: a meta-analysis of fMRI studies. Hear Res. 2014 Jan;307:29-41. doi: 10.1016/j.heares.2013.08.001. Epub 2013 Aug 11.

    PubMed 23938208
  • Kang X, Herron TJ, Woods DL. Validation of the anisotropy index ellipsoidal area ratio in diffusion tensor imaging. Magn Reson Imaging. 2010 May;28(4):546-56. doi: 10.1016/j.mri.2009.12.015. Epub 2010 Jan 21.

    PubMed 20096529
  • Woods DL, Herron TJ, Cate AD, Yund EW, Stecker GC, Rinne T, Kang X. Functional properties of human auditory cortical fields. Front Syst Neurosci. 2010 Dec 3;4:155. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2010.00155. eCollection 2010.

    PubMed 21160558
  • Cate AD, Herron TJ, Kang X, Yund EW, Woods DL. Intermodal attention modulates visual processing in dorsal and ventral streams. Neuroimage. 2012 Nov 15;63(3):1295-304. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.08.026. Epub 2012 Aug 16.

    PubMed 22917986
  • Woods DL, Herron TJ, Cate AD, Kang X, Yund EW. Phonological processing in human auditory cortical fields. Front Hum Neurosci. 2011 Apr 20;5:42. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2011.00042. eCollection 2011.

    PubMed 21541252
  • Woods DL, Yund EW, Wyma JM, Ruff R, Herron TJ. Measuring executive function in control subjects and TBI patients with question completion time (QCT). Front Hum Neurosci. 2015 May 19;9:288. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00288. eCollection 2015.

    PubMed 26042021
  • Woods DL, Wyma JM, Herron TJ, Yund EW. An improved spatial span test of visuospatial memory. Memory. 2016 Sep;24(8):1142-55. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2015.1076849. Epub 2015 Sep 11.

    PubMed 26357906
  • Turken AU, Herron TJ, Kang X, O'Connor LE, Sorenson DJ, Baldo JV, Woods DL. Multimodal surface-based morphometry reveals diffuse cortical atrophy in traumatic brain injury. BMC Med Imaging. 2009 Dec 31;9:20. doi: 10.1186/1471-2342-9-20.

    PubMed 20043859
  • Kang X, Herron TJ, Cate AD, Yund EW, Woods DL. Hemispherically-unified surface maps of human cerebral cortex: reliability and hemispheric asymmetries. PLoS One. 2012;7(9):e45582. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0045582. Epub 2012 Sep 18.

    PubMed 23029115
  • Herron TJ, Kang X, Woods DL. Automated measurement of the human corpus callosum using MRI. Front Neuroinform. 2012 Sep 12;6:25. doi: 10.3389/fninf.2012.00025. eCollection 2012.

    PubMed 22988433
  • Kang X, Herron TJ, Turken AU, Woods DL. Diffusion properties of cortical and pericortical tissue: regional variations, reliability and methodological issues. Magn Reson Imaging. 2012 Oct;30(8):1111-22. doi: 10.1016/j.mri.2012.04.004. Epub 2012 Jun 12.

    PubMed 22698767
  • Kang X, Herron TJ, Woods DL. Regional variation, hemispheric asymmetries and gender differences in pericortical white matter. Neuroimage. 2011 Jun 15;56(4):2011-23. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.03.016. Epub 2011 Mar 22.

    PubMed 21397700
  • Whitaker KJ, Kang X, Herron TJ, Woods DL, Robertson LC, Alvarez BD. White matter microstructure throughout the brain correlates with visual imagery in grapheme-color synesthesia. Neuroimage. 2014 Apr 15;90:52-9. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.12.054. Epub 2014 Jan 7.

    PubMed 24406309
  • Zhang S, Cate AD, Herron TJ, Kang X, Yund EW, Bao S, Woods DL. Functional and anatomical properties of human visual cortical fields. Vision Res. 2015 Apr;109(Pt A):107-21. doi: 10.1016/j.visres.2015.01.015. Epub 2015 Feb 4.

    PubMed 25661165
  • Kang X, Herron TJ, Ettlinger M, Woods DL. Hemispheric asymmetries in cortical and subcortical anatomy. Laterality. 2015;20(6):658-84. doi: 10.1080/1357650X.2015.1032975. Epub 2015 Apr 20.

    PubMed 25894493

Questions about this trial

What is this clinical trial studying?

An observational study of Traumatic Brain Injury, run by VA Office of Research and Development at 1 site in United States.

The full registered description is in the About this study section and the official record.

Who may be eligible to take part?

The sponsor lists 2 inclusion and 4 exclusion criteria. Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening, so read the full criteria and contact a listed site.

Is this clinical trial currently recruiting?

The record says: finished, as of the sponsor's last update on 14 Jan 2016. Status can change between updates, so confirm with the study contact before making plans.

Where is the study taking place?

The record lists 1 site in United States. Whether a site is taking part right now should be confirmed with that site. See every site.

What are the possible benefits and risks?

They depend on the study and the treatment, and no study can promise a benefit. The study team explains the known risks during informed consent, before anyone joins; the record itself does not list them.

Are results available for this study?

Yes. Results are posted in the registry (first posted 14 Jan 2016). A summary is in the For doctors view, and the full results are on ClinicalTrials.gov.

How can a doctor refer a patient or contact the research team?

The record lists no contact. The official record names the sponsor, who can be asked directly. AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals.

What does the primary outcome measure?

Performance on Trail-making Test, Part B (time frame: Single session generally several years after TBI depending on time of recruitment of subjects.). It is what the study was designed to measure, not a finding.

Where can I read the original study information?

On the ClinicalTrials.gov record for NCT01022307, which also lists 18 linked publications.

Does a listing mean the treatment is approved or proven to work?

No. A listing means the study is registered. It does not show that the treatment is safe, works, or is approved by a regulator.

How often is this information updated?

AzTrials copies changed records from ClinicalTrials.gov every night and reloads the whole registry every week. The sponsor last updated this record on 14 Jan 2016.

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