Brain network analysis based on structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is considered as an effective method for consciousness evaluation of hydrocephalus patients, which can also be applied to facilitate the ameliorative effect of lumbar cerebrospinal fluid drainage (LCFD). Automatic brain parcellation is a prerequisite for brain network construction. However, hydrocephalus images usually have large deformations and lesion erosions, which becomes challenging for ensuring effective brain parcellation works. In this paper, we develop a novel and robust method for segmenting brain regions of hydrocephalus images. Our main contribution is to design an innovative inpainting method that can amend the large deformations and lesion erosions in hydrocephalus images, and synthesize the normal brain version without injury. The synthesized images can effectively support brain parcellation tasks and lay the foundation for the subsequent brain network construction work. Specifically, the novelty of the inpainting method is that it can utilize the symmetric properties of the brain structure to ensure the quality of the synthesized results. Experiments show that the proposed brain abnormality inpainting method can effectively aid the brain network construction, and improve the CRS-R score estimation which represents the patient’s consciousness states. Furthermore, the brain network analysis based on our enhanced brain parcellation method has demonstrated potential imaging biomarkers for better interpreting and understanding the recovery of consciousness in patients with secondary hydrocephalus.

中文翻译：

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通过异常修复增强脑分区用于腰大池引流脑积水患者基于神经影像的意识评估

基于结构和功能磁共振成像（MRI）的脑网络分析被认为是脑积水患者意识评估的有效方法，也可用于促进腰椎脑脊液引流（LCFD）的改善效果。自动脑分割是脑网络构建的先决条件。然而，脑积水图像通常具有较大的变形和病变侵蚀，这对于确保有效的大脑分割工作变得具有挑战性。在本文中，我们开发了一种新颖且稳健的方法来分割脑积水图像的大脑区域。我们的主要贡献是设计了一种创新的修复方法，可以修正脑积水图像中的大变形和病变侵蚀，并合成无损伤的正常大脑版本。合成图像可以有效支持大脑分割任务，为后续的脑网络构建工作奠定基础。具体来说，修复方法的新颖之处在于它可以利用大脑结构的对称特性来保证合成结果的质量。实验表明，所提出的脑异常修复方法可以有效地辅助脑网络的构建，并提高代表患者意识状态的CRS-R评分估计。此外，基于我们增强的脑分割方法的脑网络分析已经证明了潜在的成像生物标志物，可以更好地解释和理解继发性脑积水患者的意识恢复。