Portrait de Julien Cohen-Adad

Julien Cohen-Adad

Membre académique associé
Professeur agrégé, Polytechnique Montréal, Département de génie électrique
Professeur asssocié, Université de Montréal, Département de neurosciences
Sujets de recherche
Apprentissage automatique médical

Biographie

Julien Cohen-Adad est professeur à Polytechnique Montréal et directeur associé de l'Unité de neuro-imagerie fonctionnelle de l'Université de Montréal. Il est également titulaire de la Chaire de recherche du Canada en imagerie par résonance magnétique quantitative. Ses recherches portent sur l'avancement des méthodes de neuro-imagerie avec l'aide de l'IA. Voici quelques exemples de ses projets :

- Formation multimodale pour les tâches d'imagerie médicale (segmentation des pathologies, diagnostic, etc.);

- Ajout d'un a priori issu de la physique de l'IRM pour améliorer la généralisation des modèles;

- Incorporation de mesures d'incertitude pour traiter la variabilité interévaluateurs;

- Stratégies d'apprentissage continu lorsque le partage des données est restreint;

- Introduction des méthodes d'IA dans la routine de la radiologie clinique par l’intermédiaire de solutions logicielles conviviales.

Le professeur Cohen-Adad dirige également de nombreux projets de logiciels libres qui profitent à la communauté scientifique et clinique. Plus de détails sur https://neuro.polymtl.ca/software.html.

En résumé, Julien aime : l'IRM avec des aimants puissants, la neuro-imagerie, la programmation et la science ouverte!

Étudiants actuels

Stagiaire de recherche - Polytechnique
Doctorat - Polytechnique
Co-superviseur⋅e :
Doctorat - Polytechnique
Maîtrise recherche - Polytechnique
Doctorat - Polytechnique
Co-superviseur⋅e :
Maîtrise recherche - Polytechnique
Maîtrise recherche - Polytechnique
Stagiaire de recherche - Polytechnique
Doctorat - Polytechnique
Doctorat - Polytechnique
Maîtrise recherche - Polytechnique

Publications

Repeat it without me: Crowdsourcing the T<sub>1</sub> mapping common ground via the ISMRM reproducibility challenge
Mathieu Boudreau
Agah Karakuzu
Julien Cohen‐Adad
Ecem Bozkurt
Madeline Carr
Marco Castellaro
Luis Concha
Mariya Doneva
Seraina A. Dual
Alex Ensworth
Alexandru Foias
Véronique Fortier
Refaat E. Gabr
Guillaume Gilbert
Carri K. Glide‐Hurst
Matthew Grech‐Sollars
Siyuan Hu
Oscar Jalnefjord
Jorge Jovicich
Kübra Keskin … (voir 22 de plus)
Peter Koken
Anastasia Kolokotronis
Simran Kukran
Nam G. Lee
Ives R. Levesque
Bochao Li
Dan Ma
Burkhard Mädler
Nyasha G. Maforo
Jamie Near
Erick Pasaye
Alonso Ramirez‐Manzanares
Ben Statton
Christian Stehning
Stefano Tambalo
Ye Tian
Chenyang Wang
Kilian Weiss
Niloufar Zakariaei
Shuo Zhang
Ziwei Zhao
Nikola Stikov
Eighteen submissions (39 phantom and 56 human datasets) on scanners by three MRI vendors were collected at 3 T (except one, at 0.35 T). … (voir plus)The mean coefficient of variation was 6.1% for intersubmission phantom measurements, and 2.9% for intrasubmission measurements. For humans, the intersubmission/intrasubmission coefficient of variation was 5.9/3.2% in the genu and 16/6.9% in the cortex. An interactive dashboard for data visualization was also developed: https://rrsg2020.dashboards.neurolibre.org.The T1 intersubmission variability was twice as high as the intrasubmission variability in both phantoms and human brains, indicating that the acquisition details in the original paper were insufficient to reproduce a quantitative MRI protocol. This study reports the inherent uncertainty in T1 measures across independent research groups, bringing us one step closer to a practical clinical baseline of T1 variations in vivo.
Quantifying neurodegeneration of the cervical cord and brain in degenerative cervical myelopathy: A multicentre study using quantitative magnetic resonance imaging
Patrick Freund
Viveka Boller
Tim M. Emmenegger
Muhammad Akbar
Markus Hupp
Nikolai Pfender
Claudia A. M. Gandini Wheeler-Kingshott
Michael G. Fehlings
Armin Curt
Maryam Seif
Simultaneous assessment of neurodegeneration in both the cervical cord and brain across multiple centres can enhance the effectiveness of cl… (voir plus)inical trials. Thus, this study aims to simultaneously assess microstructural changes in the cervical cord and brain above the stenosis in degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM) using quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in a multicentre study.
Quantifying neurodegeneration of the cervical cord and brain in degenerative cervical myelopathy: A multicentre study using quantitative <scp>magnetic resonance imaging</scp>
Patrick Freund
Viveka Boller
Tim M. Emmenegger
Muhammad Akbar
Markus Hupp
Nikolai Pfender
Claudia A. M. Gandini Wheeler-Kingshott
Michael G. Fehlings
Armin Curt
Maryam Seif
Body size interacts with the structure of the central nervous system: A multi-center in vivo neuroimaging study
René Labounek
Monica T. Bondy
Amy L. Paulson
Mihael Abramovic
Eva Alonso-Ortiz
Nicole T Atcheson
Laura R. Barlow
Robert L. Barry
Markus Barth
Marco Battiston
Christian Büchel
Matthew D. Budde
Virginie Callot
Anna Combes
Benjamin De Leener
Maxime Descoteaux
Paulo Loureiro de Sousa
Marek Dostál
Julien Doyon … (voir 74 de plus)
Adam V. Dvorak
Falk Eippert
Karla R. Epperson
Kevin S. Epperson
Patrick Freund
Jürgen Finsterbusch
Alexandru Foias
Michela Fratini
Issei Fukunaga
Claudia A. M. Gandini Wheeler-Kingshott
Giancarlo Germani
Guillaume Gilbert
Federico Giove
Francesco Grussu
Akifumi Hagiwara
Pierre-Gilles Henry
Tomáš Horák
Masaaki Hori
James M. Joers
Kouhei Kamiya
Haleh Karbasforoushan
Miloš Keřkovský
Ali Khatibi
Joo-Won Kim
Nawal Kinany
Hagen Kitzler
Shannon Kolind
Yazhuo Kong
Petr Kudlička
Paul Kuntke
Nyoman D. Kurniawan
Slawomir Kusmia
Maria Marcella Laganà
Cornelia Laule
Christine S. W. Law
Christine S. W. Law
Tobias Leutritz
Yaou Liu
Sara Llufriu
Sean Mackey
Allan R. Martin
Eloy Martinez-Heras
Loan Mattera
Kristin P. O’Grady
Nico Papinutto
Daniel Papp
Deborah Pareto
Todd B. Parrish
Anna Pichiecchio
Ferran Prados
Àlex Rovira
Marc J. Ruitenberg
Rebecca S. Samson
Giovanni Savini
Maryam Seif
Alan C. Seifert
Alex K. Smith
Seth A. Smith
Zachary A. Smith
Elisabeth Solana
Yuichi Suzuki
George W Tackley
Alexandra Tinnermann
Dimitri Van De Ville
Marios C. Yiannakas
Kenneth A. Weber
Nikolaus Weiskopf
Richard G. Wise
Patrik O. Wyss
Junqian Xu
Christophe Lenglet
Igor Nestrasil
Clinical research emphasizes the implementation of rigorous and reproducible study designs that rely on between-group matching or controllin… (voir plus)g for sources of biological variation such as subject’s sex and age. However, corrections for body size (i.e. height and weight) are mostly lacking in clinical neuroimaging designs. This study investigates the importance of body size parameters in their relationship with spinal cord (SC) and brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) metrics. Data were derived from a cosmopolitan population of 267 healthy human adults (age 30.1±6.6 years old, 125 females). We show that body height correlated strongly or moderately with brain gray matter (GM) volume, cortical GM volume, total cerebellar volume, brainstem volume, and cross-sectional area (CSA) of cervical SC white matter (CSA-WM; 0.44≤r≤0.62). In comparison, age correlated weakly with cortical GM volume, precentral GM volume, and cortical thickness (−0.21≥r≥−0.27). Body weight correlated weakly with magnetization transfer ratio in the SC WM, dorsal columns, and lateral corticospinal tracts (−0.20≥r≥−0.23). Body weight further correlated weakly with the mean diffusivity derived from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in SC WM (r=−0.20) and dorsal columns (−0.21), but only in males. CSA-WM correlated strongly or moderately with brain volumes (0.39≤r≤0.64), and weakly with precentral gyrus thickness and DTI-based fractional anisotropy in SC dorsal columns and SC lateral corticospinal tracts (−0.22≥r≥−0.25). Linear mixture of sex and age explained 26±10% of data variance in brain volumetry and SC CSA. The amount of explained variance increased at 33±11% when body height was added into the mixture model. Age itself explained only 2±2% of such variance. In conclusion, body size is a significant biological variable. Along with sex and age, body size should therefore be included as a mandatory variable in the design of clinical neuroimaging studies examining SC and brain structure.
Spinal cord perfusion impairments in the M83 mouse model of Parkinson’s disease
Benjamin F. Combes
Sandeep Kumar Kalva
Pierre-Louis Benveniste
Agathe Tournant
Man Hoi Law
Joshua Newton
Maik Krüger
Rebecca Z. Weber
Inês Dias
Daniela Noain
Xose Luis Dean-Ben
Uwe Konietzko
Christian R. Baumann
Per-Göran Gillberg
Christoph Hock
Roger M. Nitsch
Daniel Razansky
Ruiqing Ni
Metabolism and bioenergetics in the central nervous system play important roles in the pathophysiology of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Here, … (voir plus)we employed a multimodal imaging approach to assess oxygenation changes in the spinal cord of a transgenic M83 murine model of PD in comparison to non-transgenic littermates at 9-12 months-of-age. A lower oxygen saturation (SO 2 ) SVOT was detected in vivo with spiral volumetric optoacoustic tomography (SVOT) in the spinal cord of M83 mice compared to non-transgenic littermate mice. Ex-vivo high-field T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and immunostaining for alpha-synuclein (phospho-S129) and vascular organisation (CD31 and GLUT1) were used to investigate the nature of the abnormalities detected via in vivo imaging. Ex-vivo analysis showed that the vascular network in the spinal cord was not impaired in the spinal cord of M83 mice. Ex-vivo MRI assisted with deep learning-based automatic segmentation showed no volumetric atrophy in the spinal cord of M83 mice compared to non-transgenic littermates, whereas nuclear alpha-synuclein phosphorylated at Ser129 site could be linked to early pathology and metabolic dysfunction. The proposed and validated non-invasive high-resolution imaging tool to study oxygen saturation in the spinal cord of PD mice holds promise for assessing early changes preceding motor deficits in PD mice.
Contrast-agnostic Spinal Cord Segmentation: A Comparative Study of ConvNets and Vision Transformers
Enamundram Naga Karthik
A. Chandar
The cross-sectional area (CSA) of the spinal cord (SC) computed from its segmentation is a relevant clinical biomarker for the diagnosis and… (voir plus) monitoring of cord compression and atrophy. One key limitation of existing automatic methods is that their SC segmentations depend on the MRI contrast, resulting in different CSA across contrasts. Furthermore, these methods rely on CNNs, leaving a gap in the literature for exploring the performance of modern deep learning (DL) architectures. In this study, we extend our recent work \cite{Bdard2023TowardsCS} by evaluating the contrast-agnostic SC segmentation capabilities of different classes of DL architectures, namely, ConvNeXt, vision transformers (ViTs), and hierarchical ViTs. We compared 7 different DL models using the open-source \textit{Spine Generic} Database of healthy participants
Advanced MRI metrics improve the prediction of baseline disease severity for individuals with degenerative cervical myelopathy
Abdul Al-Shawwa
David C. Anderson
Newton Cho
Nathan Evaniew
W. Bradley Jacobs
Allan R. Martin
Ranjeet Gaekwad
Saswati Tripathy
Jacques Bouchard
Steve Casha
Roger Cho
S. Duplessis
Peter Lewkonia
Fred Nicholls
Paul Salo
Alex Soroceanu
Ganesh Swamy
Kenneth Thomas
Michael Yang … (voir 2 de plus)
Julien Cohen‐Adad
David W. Cadotte
Normalizing Spinal Cord Compression Morphometric Measures: Application in Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy
Maryam Seif
Armin Curt
Simon Schadings
M.Sc
Nikolai Pfender
Patrick Freund
Markus Hupp
The study introduced an automatic method for computation of normalized MSCC measures of cord compression from MRI scans, which is an importa… (voir plus)nt step towards better informed therapeutic decisions in DCM patients. The method is open-source and available in the Spinal Cord Toolbox v6.0.
A database of the healthy human spinal cord morphometry in the PAM50 template space
Miloš Keřkovský
Tomáš Rohan
Measures of spinal cord morphometry computed from magnetic resonance images serve as relevant prognostic biomarkers for a range of spinal co… (voir plus)rd pathologies, including traumatic and non-traumatic spinal cord injury and neurodegenerative diseases. However, interpreting these imaging biomarkers is difficult due to considerable intra- and inter-subject variability. Yet, there is no clear consensus on a normalization method that would help reduce this variability and more insights into the distribution of these morphometrics are needed. In this study, we computed a database of normative values for six commonly used measures of spinal cord morphometry: cross-sectional area, anteroposterior diameter, transverse diameter, compression ratio, eccentricity, and solidity. Normative values were computed from a large open-access dataset of healthy adult volunteers (N = 203) and were brought to the common space of the PAM50 spinal cord template using a newly proposed normalization method based on linear interpolation. Compared to traditional image-based registration, the proposed normalization approach does not involve image transformations and, therefore, does not introduce distortions of spinal cord anatomy. This is a crucial consideration in preserving the integrity of the spinal cord anatomy in conditions such as spinal cord injury. This new morphometric database allows researchers to normalize based on sex and age, thereby minimizing inter-subject variability associated with demographic and biological factors. The proposed methodology is open-source and accessible through the Spinal Cord Toolbox (SCT) v6.0 and higher.
SCIseg: Automatic Segmentation of T2-weighted Hyperintense Lesions in Spinal Cord Injury
Andrew C. Smith
Dario Pfyffer
Simon Schading-Sassenhausen
Lynn Farner
Kenneth A. Weber II
Patrick Freund
Background: Quantitative MRI biomarkers in spinal cord injury (SCI) can help understand the extent of the focal injury. However, due to the … (voir plus)lack of automatic segmentation methods, these biomarkers are derived manually, which is a time-consuming process prone to intra- and inter-rater variability, thus limiting large multi-site studies and translation to clinical workflows. Purpose: To develop a deep learning tool for the automatic segmentation of T2-weighted hyperintense lesions and the spinal cord in SCI patients. Material and Methods: This retrospective study included a cohort of SCI patients from three sites enrolled between July 2002 and February 2023 who underwent clinical MRI examination. A deep learning model, SCIseg, was trained on T2-weighted images with heterogeneous image resolutions (isotropic, anisotropic), and orientations (axial, sagittal) acquired using scanners from different manufacturers (Siemens, Philips, GE) and different field strengths (1T, 1.5T, 3T) for the automatic segmentation of SCI lesions and the spinal cord. The proposed method was visually and quantitatively compared with other open-source baseline methods. Quantitative biomarkers (lesion volume, lesion length, and maximal axial damage ratio) computed from manual ground-truth lesion masks and automatic SCIseg predictions were correlated with clinical scores (pinprick, light touch, and lower extremity motor scores). A between-group comparison was performed using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Results: MRI data from 191 SCI patients (mean age, 48.1 years {+/-} 17.9 [SD]; 142 males) were used for training. Compared to existing methods, SCIseg achieved the best segmentation performance for both the cord and lesions and generalized well to both traumatic and non-traumatic SCI patients. SCIseg is open-source and accessible through the Spinal Cord Toolbox. Conclusion: Automatic segmentation of intramedullary lesions commonly seen in traumatic SCI replaces the tedious manual annotation process and enables the extraction of relevant lesion morphometrics in large cohorts. The proposed model generalizes across lesion etiologies (traumatic, ischemic), scanner manufacturers and heterogeneous image resolutions.
Automatic Segmentation of the Spinal Cord Nerve Rootlets
Theo Mathieu
Raphaëlle Schlienger
Olivia S. Kowalczyk
Precise identification of spinal nerve rootlets is relevant to delineate spinal levels for the study of functional activity in the spinal co… (voir plus)rd. The goal of this study was to develop an automatic method for the semantic segmentation of spinal nerve rootlets from T2-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. Images from two open-access MRI datasets were used to train a 3D multi-class convolutional neural network using an active learning approach to segment C2-C8 dorsal nerve rootlets. Each output class corresponds to a spinal level. The method was tested on 3T T2-weighted images from datasets unseen during training to assess inter-site, inter-session, and inter-resolution variability. The test Dice score was 0.67 +- 0.16 (mean +- standard deviation across testing images and rootlets levels), suggesting a good performance. The method also demonstrated low inter-vendor and inter-site variability (coefficient of variation <= 1.41 %), as well as low inter-session variability (coefficient of variation <= 1.30 %) indicating stable predictions across different MRI vendors, sites, and sessions. The proposed methodology is open-source and readily available in the Spinal Cord Toolbox (SCT) v6.2 and higher.
Reproducible Spinal Cord Quantitative MRI Analysis with the Spinal Cord Toolbox
The spinal cord plays a pivotal role in the central nervous system, providing communication between the brain and the body and containing cr… (voir plus)itical motor and sensory networks. Recent advancements in spinal cord MRI data acquisition and image analysis have shown a potential to improve the diagnostics, prognosis, and management of a variety of pathological conditions. In this review, we first discuss the significance of standardized spinal cord MRI acquisition protocol in multi-center and multi-manufacturer studies. Then, we cover open-access spinal cord MRI datasets, which are important for reproducible science and validation of new methods. Finally, we elaborate on the recent advances in spinal cord MRI data analysis techniques implemented in the open-source software package Spinal Cord Toolbox (SCT).