arXiv subjects

Björn Menze

Publications and source records attributed to Björn Menze.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

X-LMC: Cross-View Spatiotemporal Collateral Circulation Scoring from DSA

Digital subtraction angiography (DSA) is the reference standard for leptomeningeal collateral (LMC) assessment, providing critical prognostic insights to guide secondary treatment strategies, neurorehabilitation planning, and retrospective stroke research. However, clinical LMC grading via the ASITN/SIR scale relies on manual, highly variable visual inspection. We introduce X-LMC, a spatiotemporal framework for automated collateral scoring from time-resolved biplane DSA. The proposed architecture encodes spatial frame representations through a DINOv2 backbone, fuses orthogonal projections via a token-level cross-view attention module, and models representations of contrast bolus dynamics using a recurrent network architecture. We evaluate our framework on a multicenter dataset of 134 patients with M1-segment occlusions. In a 5-fold cross-validation setting, X-LMC yields higher point estimates than static architectures and spatiotemporal baselines adapted from related angiographic tasks, achieving a Quadratic Weighted Kappa (QWK) of 0.398 (vs. 0.322) and a dichotomized macro-F1 score of 0.711 (vs. 0.663) against the best-performing baseline. X-LMC performance also aligns with the observed clinical inter-rater agreement (QWK: 0.314). As the first DSA study attempting to automate LMC scoring, we demonstrate that multi-view temporal deep learning can capture collateral-specific contrast kinetics. Ultimately, these benchmarks delineate the clinical ambiguities and achievable performance boundaries of automated ASITN/SIR grading, establishing a reproducible foundation for objective hemodynamic phenotyping in stroke cohorts. Code is available at https://github.com/maedehafezi/X-LMC.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2025

A Lightweight Optimization Framework for Estimating 3D Brain Tumor Infiltration

Glioblastoma, the most aggressive primary brain tumor, poses a severe clinical challenge due to its diffuse microscopic infiltration, which remains largely undetected on standard MRI. As a result, current radiotherapy planning employs a uniform 15 mm margin around the resection cavity, failing to capture patient-specific tumor spread. Tumor growth modeling offers a promising approach to reveal this hidden infiltration. However, methods based on partial differential equations or physics-informed neural networks tend to be computationally intensive or overly constrained, limiting their clinical adaptability to individual patients. In this work, we propose a lightweight, rapid, and robust optimization framework that estimates the 3D tumor concentration by fitting it to MRI tumor segmentations while enforcing a smooth concentration landscape. This approach achieves superior tumor recurrence prediction on 192 brain tumor patients across two public datasets, outperforming state-of-the-art baselines while reducing runtime from 30 minutes to less than one minute. Furthermore, we demonstrate the framework's versatility and adaptability by showing its ability to seamlessly integrate additional imaging modalities or physical constraints.

physics.med-ph↗

arXiv2025

From Fiber Tracts to Tumor Spread: Biophysical Modeling of Butterfly Glioma Growth Using Diffusion Tensor Imaging

Butterfly tumors are a distinct class of gliomas that span the corpus callosum, producing a characteristic butterfly-shaped appearance on MRI. The distinctive growth pattern of these tumors highlights how white matter fibers and structural connectivity influence brain tumor cell migration. To investigate this relation, we applied biophysical tumor growth models to a large patient cohort, systematically comparing models that incorporate fiber tract information with those that do not. Our results demonstrate that including fiber orientation data significantly improves model accuracy, particularly for a subset of butterfly tumors. These findings highlight the critical role of white matter architecture in tumor spread and suggest that integrating fiber tract information can enhance the precision of radiotherapy target volume delineation.

physics.med-ph↗