Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative

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MRI
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MRI Quality Control

MRI Quality Control

Each series in each scan undergoes quality control (QC) at the Mayo ADIR Lab. Two levels of quality control are performed:

Scans are automatically checked for adherence to the protocol parameters.

Trained analysts manually inspect images to ensure series-specific quality, and assign a numerical grade each scan: 1-3 is acceptable and 4 is failure (unusable).

Factors that are taken into account in assigning this grade include:

Presence and severity of artifacts
(e.g., participant motion)

Anatomical coverage:
ensuring that the entire head was imaged

Completeness:
all slices were acquired and transmitted

Overall image quality

QC information is available for each series on LONI, and users can employ scan-level QC information as filters in preparing image collections.

ADNI4 De-identification Quality Control

Certain MRI series could potentially be used by malicious actors to reconstruct an individual’s face, which in turn can be matched to public photos of a person.

ADNI4 introduced a new method of protecting participant privacy in released MR images in order to address this concern. This de-identification strategy, called refacing, makes it possible to remove facial information from imaging series prior to public release.

Refaced images undergo a separate QC check of the refacing process for every relevant series. Note that not all series types require defacing.

Figure Citation:

Christopher G. Schwarz, Walter K. Kremers, Arvin Arani, Marios Savvides, Robert I. Reid, Jeffrey L. Gunter, Matthew L. Senjem, Petrice M. Cogswell, Prashanthi Vemuri, Kejal Kantarci, David S. Knopman, Ronald C. Petersen, Clifford R. Jack, A face-off of MRI research sequences by their need for de-facing, NeuroImage, Volume 276, 2023, 120199, ISSN 1053-8119, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120199.