Background: Education and health are crucial topics for public policies as both largely determine the future wellbeing of the society. Currently, several studies recognize that physical activity (PA) benefits brain health in children. However, most of these studies have not been carried out in developing countries or lack the transference into the education field. The Cogni-Action Project is divided into two stages, a cross-sectional study and a crossover-randomized trial. The aim of the first part is to establish the associations of PA, sedentarism, and physical fitness with brain structure and function, cognitive performance and academic achievement in Chilean schoolchildren (10–14 years-old). The aim of the second part is to determinate the acute effects of three PA protocols on neuroelectric indices during a working memory and a reading task. Methods: PA and sedentarism will be self-reported and objectively-assessed with accelerometers in a representative subsample, whilst physical fitness will be evaluated through the ALPHA fitness test battery. Brain structure and function will be assessed by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in a randomized subsample. Cognitive performance will be assessed through the NeuroCognitive Performance Test, and academic achievement by school grades. In the second part 32 adolescents (12–13 year-old) will be cross-over randomized to these condition (i) “Moderate-Intensity Continuous Training” (MICT), (ii) “Cooperative High-Intensity Interval Training” (C-HIIT), and (iii) Sedentary condition. Neuroelectric indices will be measures by electroencephalogram (EEG) and eye-tracking, working memory by n-back task and reading comprehension by a reading task. Discussion: The main strength of this project is that, to our knowledge, this is the first study analysing the potential association of PA, sedentarism, and physical fitness on brain structure and function, cognitive performance, and academic achievement in a developing country, which presents an important sociocultural gap. For this purpose, this project will use advanced technologies in neuroimaging (MRI), electrophysiology (EEG), and eye-tracking, as well as objective and quality measurements of several physical and cognitive health outcomes. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT03894241 Date of register: March 28, 2019. Retrospectively Registered.

Purpose: Intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) analysis has attracted the interest of the clinical community due to its close relationship with microperfusion. Nevertheless, there is no clear reference protocol for its implementation; one of the questions being which b-value distribution to use. This study aimed to stress the importance of the sampling scheme and to show that an optimized b-value distribution decreases the variance associated with IVIM parameters in the brain with respect to a regular distribution in healthy volunteers.Methods: Ten volunteers were included in this study; images were acquired on a 1.5T MR scanner. Two distributions of 16 b-values were used: one considered ‘regular’ due to its close association with that used in other studies, and the other considered ‘optimized’ according to previous studies. IVIM parameters were adjusted according to the bi-exponential model, using two-step method. Analysis was undertaken in ROI defined using in the Automated Anatomical Labeling atlas, and parameters distributions were compared in a total of 832 ROI.Results: Maps with fewer speckles were obtained with the ‘optimized’ distribution. Coefficients of variation did not change significantly for the estimation of the diffusion coefficient D but decreased by approximately 39% for the pseudo-diffusion coefficient estimation and by 21% for the perfusion fraction. Distributions of adjusted parameters were found significantly different in 50% of the cases for the perfusion fraction, in 80% of the cases for the pseudo-diffusion coefficient and 17% of the cases for the diffusion coefficient. Observations across brain areas show that the range of average values for IVIM parameters is smaller in the ‘optimized’ case.Conclusion: Using an optimized distribution, data are sampled in a way that the IVIM signal decay is better described and less variance is obtained in the fitted parameters. The increased precision gained could help to detect small variations in IVIM parameters.

Medical image quality is crucial to obtaining reliable diagnostics. Most quality controls rely on routine tests using phantoms, which do not reflect closely the reality of images obtained on patients and do not reflect directly the quality perceived by radiologists. The purpose of this work is to develop a method that classifies the image quality perceived by radiologists in MR images. The focus was set on lumbar images as they are widely used with different challenges. Three neuroradiologists evaluated the image quality of a dataset that included $T_1$-weighting images in axial and sagittal orientation, and sagittal $T_2$-weighting. In parallel, we introduced the computational assessment using a wide range of features extracted from the images, then fed them into a classifier system. A total of 95 exams were used, from our local hospital and a public database, and part of the images was manipulated to broaden the distribution quality of the dataset. Good recall of 82% and an area under curve (AUC) of 77% were obtained on average in testing condition, using a Support Vector Machine. Even though the actual implementation still relies on user interaction to extract features, the results are promising with respect to a potential implementation for monitoring image quality online with the acquisition process.

Cerebral aneurysm is a cerebrovascular disorder characterized by a bulging in a weak area in the wall of an artery that supplies blood to the brain. It is relevant to understand the mechanisms leading to the apparition of aneurysms, their growth and, more important, leading to their rupture. The purpose of this study is to study the impact on aneurysm rupture of the combination of different parameters, instead of focusing on only one factor at a time as is frequently found in the literature, using machine learning and feature extraction techniques. This discussion takes relevance in the context of the complex decision that the physicians have to take to decide which therapy to apply, as each intervention bares its own risks, and implies to use a complex ensemble of resources (human resources, OR, etc.) in hospitals always under very high work load. This project has been raised in our actual working team, composed of interventional neuroradiologist, radiologic technologist, informatics engineers and biomedical engineers, from Valparaiso public Hospital, Hospital Carlos van Buren, and from Universidad de Valparaíso – Facultad de Ingeniería and Facultad de Medicina. This team has been working together in the last few years, and is now participating in the implementation of an “interdisciplinary platform for innovation in health”, as part of a bigger project leaded by Universidad de Valparaiso (PMI UVA1402). It is relevant to emphasize that this project is made feasible by the existence of this network between physicians and engineers, and by the existence of data already registered in an orderly manner, structured and recorded in digital format. The present proposal arises from the description in nowadays literature that the actual indicators, whether based on morphological description of the aneurysm, or based on characterization of biomechanical factor or others, these indicators were shown not to provide sufficient information in order to predict by themselves the risk of rupture. Therefore, our hypothesis is that the risk of rupture lies on the combination of multiple actors. These actors together would play different roles that could be: weakening of the artery wall, increasing biomechanical stresses on the wall induced by blood flow, in addition to personal sensitivity due to family history, or personal history of comorbidity, or even seasonal variations that could gate different inflammation mechanisms. The main goal of this project is to identify relevant variables that may help in the process of predicting the risk of intracranial aneurysm rupture using machine learning and image processing techniques based on structured and non-structured data from multiple sources. We believe that the identification and the combined use of relevant variables extracted from clinical, demographical, environmental and medical imaging data sources will improve the estimation of the aneurysm rupture risk, with respect to the actual practiced method based essentially on the aneurysm size. The methodology of this work consist of four phases: (1) Data collection and storage, (2) feature extraction from multiple sources in particular from angiographic images, (3) development of the model that could describe the risk of aneurysm rupture based on the fusion and combination of the features, and (4) Identification of relevant variables related to the aneurysm rupture process. This study corresponds to an analytic transversal study with prospective and retrospective characteristics. This work will be based on publicly available health statistics data, data of weather conditions, together with clinical and demographic data of patients diagnosed with intracranial aneurysm in the Hospital Carlos van Buren. As main results of this project we are expecting to identify relevant variables extracted from images and other sources that could play a role in the risk of aneurysm rupture. The proposed model will be presented to the physicians of the Hospital Carlos van Buren, to be further implemented in this Institution according to the demonstrated impact of our results. The main results will be published in indexed journals and presented at national and international conferences.

OBJECTIVE: Noninvasive brain mapping with functional MRI (fMRI) and mapping with direct electrical stimulation (DES) are important tools in glioma surgery, but the evidence is inconclusive regarding the sensitivity and specificity of fMRI. The Human Connectome Project (HCP) proposed a new cortical parcellation that has not been thoroughly tested in a clinical setting. The main goal of this study was to evaluate the correlation of fMRI and DES mapping with HCP areas in a clinical setting, and to evaluate the performance of fMRI mapping in motor and language tasks in patients with glioma, using DES as the gold standard. METHODS: Forty patients with supratentorial gliomas were examined using preoperative fMRI and underwent awake craniotomy with DES. Functional activation maps were visualized on a 3D representation of the cortex, classified according to HCP areas, and compared with surgical mapping. RESULTS: Functional MRI was successful in identifying language and motor HCP areas in most cases, including novel areas such as 55b and the superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF). Functional MRI had a sensitivity and specificity of 100% and 71%, respectively, for motor function in HCP area 4. Sensitivity and specificity were different according to the area and fMRI protocol; i.e., semantic protocols performed better in Brodmann area (BA) 55b/peri-sylvian language areas with 100% sensitivity and 20% specificity, and word production protocols in BAs 44 and 45 with 70% sensitivity and 80% specificity. Some compensation patterns could be observed, such as motor activation of the postcentral gyrus in precentral gliomas. CONCLUSIONS: HCP areas can be detected in clinical scenarios of glioma surgery. These areas appear relatively stable across patients, but compensation patterns seem to differ, allowing occasional resection of activating areas. Newly described areas such as 55b and SLF can act as critical areas in language networks. Surgical planning should account for these parcellations.