DTI & Tractography in Pediatric Tumor Surgery

London Health Sciences Centre

Status: Unknown

Conditions: Cerebellar Mutism; Brain Damage, Chronic; Cerebellar Cognitive Affective Syndrome

Treatments: Device: BrightMatter™ products

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; Industry

Identifiers

NCT02810626

UWO HSREB Ref#107499

Details and patient eligibility

About

The goal of this project will be to demonstrate that Synaptive Medical's Diffusion Tensor Imaging(DTI) product functionality used in pre-operative planning and intraoperative surgical navigation, improves clinical outcomes corresponding to a reduction in neurological and neuropsychological deficits in pediatric brain tumor surgery.

Full description

Brain tumours are the most common form of solid tumours in children which often arise from the cerebellum. Treatment involves a complete resection of the tumour. Although surgical resection may eliminate most of the malignancy, signs of post-neurologic deficit may present as a consequence to the treatment.

One such example is cerebellar mutism syndrome (CMS), a postoperative syndrome typically arising 1 to 2 days after resection of a midline posterior fossa tumor; it consists of diminished speech progressing to mutism, emotional lability, hypotonia, and ataxia. While some of the symptoms recover after a few months, neuropsychological testing shows long term deficits in language (agramatism), executive function and verbal memory.

This study aims to investigate whether the use of Synaptive Medical's BrightMatter™ technology can help neurosurgeons better visualize and plan surgeries by avoiding eloquent fiber tracts in the brain and cerebellum; thus minimizing damage pertaining to neurologic and motor functionality. The use of these products will also be assessed for improved clinical outcomes in pediatric tumor surgery.

Enrollment: 24 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: Under 18 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Pediatric subjects between the ages of 0-18 years with a brain tumor.

Exclusion criteria

• Pediatric subjects with contra-indication to MRI (metal, claustrophobia, etc.)

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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24 participants in 2 patient groups

Control

No Intervention group

Description:

Control Group (surgical standard of care): Subjects 18 years and younger diagnosed with a pediatric brain tumor, and who are eligible for surgical treatment will be recruited. All subjects will have clinical MRI scans that include a diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) protocol. Surgery will be carried out according to usual standard of care, without the use of processing for DTI tractography. Additional clinical scanning with the same protocol will be carried out post-operatively at 6 months. Pre-operative and post-operative quality of life assessments, functional testing and clinical outcome tests will be conducted at this post-operative period (6-months).

Interventional

Other group

Description:

Interventional Group (involvement of all BrightMatter™ products): Subjects 18 years and younger diagnosed with a pediatric brain tumor and who are eligible for surgical treatment will be recruited. All subjects will have clinical MRI scans that include a diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) protocol and will be sent to the interventional technology (BrightMatter Bridge) for quality control. The QC'ed images will then be sent to a pre-operating planning software (BrightMatter Plan) for planning the surgical approach. Surgery will be carried out with guidance from the exported plan and the intra-operative neuro-navigation software, BrightMatter Guide, with the use of post-processing DTI tractography. Additional clinical scanning with the same protocol will be carried out post-operatively at 6 months. Pre-operative and post-operative quality of life assessments, functional testing and clinical outcome tests will be conducted at this post-operative period (6-months).

Treatment:

Device: BrightMatter™ products