An interactive meta-analysis of MRI biomarkers of myelin
Abstract
Several MRI measures have been proposed as in vivo biomarkers of myelin, each with applications ranging from plasticity to pathology. Despite the availability of these myelin-sensitive modalities, specificity and sensitivity have been a matter of discussion. Debate about which MRI measure is the most suitable for quantifying myelin is still ongoing. In this study, we performed a systematic review of published quantitative validation studies to clarify how different these measures are when compared to the underlying histology. We analysed the results from 43 studies applying meta-analysis tools, controlling for study sample size and using interactive visualization (https://neurolibre.github.io/myelin-meta-analysis). We report the overall estimates and the prediction intervals for the coefficient of determination and find that MT and relaxometry-based measures exhibit the highest correlations with myelin content. We also show which measures are, and which measures are not statistically different regarding their relationship with histology.
Data availability
All the data collected from the selected studies for this meta-analysis are provided in the spreadsheet file Source data 1
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Wellcome Trust (213722/Z/18/Z)
- Matteo Mancini
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Saad Jbabdi, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Publication history
- Received: July 28, 2020
- Accepted: October 20, 2020
- Accepted Manuscript published: October 21, 2020 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: November 6, 2020 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2020, Mancini et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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