Topological data analysis for discovery in preclinical spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury methods
Aim. Evidence-backed execution summary for Topological data analysis for discovery in preclinical spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury methods from Topological data analysis for discovery in preclinical spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury.
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This experiment, in seven questions
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What do I need before I start?
human
Subject model for the experiment.
- Use
- confirm full cohort details in the source paper
Visually guided data exploration uncovers drug effects
reagent used in the protocol.
- Use
- We identified the nodes within the topology that stood out as having poor functional recovery on grooming and forelimb open field (, circles), despite nodes in this region showing less-severe injuries based on the degree biomechanical tissue deformation (, circle). This sub-network was also significantly enriched...
Visually guided data exploration uncovers drug effects
reagent used in the protocol.
- Use
- The TDA-identified subpopulation analysis suggested that minocycline and MP had effects on a subset of endpoints, in a subset of the individuals. To confirm the generality of these effects, we next tested for the effects of minocycline and MP on MN sparing, total tissue area and grooming function on the full data se...
Conflicting cross-validation and irreproducible drug effects
reagent used in the protocol.
- Use
- TDA-based data-driven discovery revealed a hidden finding in legacy data that MP was potentially detrimental in cervical SCI. To test whether the same might be true in thoracic SCI, we pooled data from the VISION-SCI database containing other subjects that were part of controlled MP drug trials. A previously conduct...
Data-driven discovery that hypertension predicts dysfunction
reagent used in the protocol.
- Use
- Application of TDA in the context of cross-validation testing of MP treatment following thoracic SCI revealed an unexpected and much stronger predictor of neurological recovery than any of the drug conditions. Visually guided exploration of TDA sub-networks uncovered unusually large differences in functional recover...
Data-driven exploration of preclinical drug trial efficacy
reagent used in the protocol.
- Use
- Comparison of continuous variables was performed by two tests: KS test and t -test. The KS test was used to investigate the non-parametric probabilistic distributions of samples across each (one-dimensional) variable, while the t -test explores whether the null hypothesis (mean value of both samples) is supported. C...
TDA reveals forelimb outcomes most sensitive to cervical SCI
To test the application of TDA combined with SVD to SCI, we assembled raw data from several common SCI models, including hemisections, weight-drop and force-driven hemi-contusion injuries to the cervical spinal cord (;, dropdown). Grooming behaviour and paw preference in a cylinder reveal graded levels of recovery...
- Use
- To test the application of TDA combined with SVD to SCI, we assembled raw data from several common SCI models, including hemisections, weight-drop and force-driven hemi-contusion injuries to the cervical spinal cord (;, dropdown). Grooming behaviour and paw preference in a cylinder reveal graded levels of recovery...
Visually guided data exploration uncovers drug effects
We identified the nodes within the topology that stood out as having poor functional recovery on grooming and forelimb open field (, circles), despite nodes in this region showing less-severe injuries based on the degree biomechanical tissue deformation (, circle). This sub-network was also significantly enriched...
- Use
- We identified the nodes within the topology that stood out as having poor functional recovery on grooming and forelimb open field (, circles), despite nodes in this region showing less-severe injuries based on the degree biomechanical tissue deformation (, circle). This sub-network was also significantly enriched...
Methods
TDA was used to rapidly analyse and visualize clustering of individuals based on their similarity across hundreds of variables simultaneously ( ). TDA is an adaptation of the methods of topology, the mathematical discipline which studies robust methods of measuring and representing shape, to create compact visual re...
- Use
- TDA was used to rapidly analyse and visualize clustering of individuals based on their similarity across hundreds of variables simultaneously ( ). TDA is an adaptation of the methods of topology, the mathematical discipline which studies robust methods of measuring and representing shape, to create compact visual re...
TDA applied to combined TBI and cervical SCI in rats
VNE was combined with the principal and secondary metric SVD lenses, which are analogous to PCA. The network was set at a resolution of 30 and a gain of × 4.0 (equalized) from which subjects with shared syndromic features were clustered together and distributed into a syndromic network topology ( ). Adjusting t...
- Use
- VNE was combined with the principal and secondary metric SVD lenses, which are analogous to PCA. The network was set at a resolution of 30 and a gain of × 4.0 (equalized) from which subjects with shared syndromic features were clustered together and distributed into a syndromic network topology ( ). Adjusting t...
TDA applied to combined TBI and cervical SCI in rats
Variables that were analysed included all available endpoint data, excluding predictor data such as categorical injury condition, gender or treatment. For networks in,,, these endpoint data included injury biomechanics of brain and spinal cord tissue displacement, force and velocity, terminal tissue sparing, weig...
- Use
- Variables that were analysed included all available endpoint data, excluding predictor data such as categorical injury condition, gender or treatment. For networks in,,, these endpoint data included injury biomechanics of brain and spinal cord tissue displacement, force and velocity, terminal tissue sparing, weig...
TDA applied to combined TBI and cervical SCI in rats
Schematic diagrams for measures of functional recovery ( ) and histopathology ( ) were created for animal model visualization. Terminal outcomes were then visualized at the univariate level ( ), which is the current standard in the SCI preclinical literature, showing the distribution of subjects for each injury grou...
- Use
- Schematic diagrams for measures of functional recovery ( ) and histopathology ( ) were created for animal model visualization. Terminal outcomes were then visualized at the univariate level ( ), which is the current standard in the SCI preclinical literature, showing the distribution of subjects for each injury grou...
TDA applied to graded unilateral cervical SCI in rats
Variables that were analysed included all endpoint data, excluding predictor information about categorical injury condition, gender or treatment. Endpoint data used for,, include a standardized measure of tissue compression for injury biomechanics across different contusion devices, terminal tissue pathology measu...
- Use
- Variables that were analysed included all endpoint data, excluding predictor information about categorical injury condition, gender or treatment. Endpoint data used for,, include a standardized measure of tissue compression for injury biomechanics across different contusion devices, terminal tissue pathology measu...
Statistical analysis
Software used for acquisition, scoring, statistics, or reporting.
- Use
- Statistical analysis testing between groups for the identified measures were performed in Ayasdi v2.0 for group differences in the network, and plotted for box plots or histograms in GraphPad Prism 5 and analysed for significance using two-tailed t -tests and one-way ANOVAs in SPSS v19 (,, ).
TDA applied to graded unilateral cervical SCI in rats
Software used for acquisition, scoring, statistics, or reporting.
- Use
- A detailed interpretation of the syndromic space for graded unilateral cervical SCI has been reported previously, however, those analyses were performed in SPSS v. 19, and do not allow for rapid analysis and visualization of the syndromic SCI space that is presented here.
Testing perioperative hypertension-recovery association
Software used for acquisition, scoring, statistics, or reporting.
- Use
- KS tests were used to compare group differences in the networks generated for the MASCIS OSU trial year 3 data set ( N =72) to identify significant group differences between BBB functional recovery that were predicted by MAP levels at the time of injury ( ). Rats with an age range of 2-5 months from years 1...
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TDA reveals forelimb outcomes most sensitive to cervical SCI
To test the application of TDA combined with SVD to SCI, we assembled raw data from several common SCI models, including hemisections, weight-drop and force-driven hemi-contusion injuries to the cervical spinal cord (;, dropdown). Grooming behaviour and paw preference in a cylinder reveal graded levels of recovery ( ), that map to lesion size, tissue sparing and deformation (;, dropdown). However, measures of open-field locomotion for both forelimb (;, dropdown) and hindlimb (, dropdown) do not show much variability in recovery of function. In the syndromic topology, grooming function has the strongest visual mapping to lesion size (;, dropdown), whereas recovery of paw preference in the cylinder shows a stronger visual mapping with white matter sparing. Little to no variability is seen in the hindlimb open field (, dropdown), most likely because it was designed to measure h...
Visually guided data exploration uncovers drug effects
We identified the nodes within the topology that stood out as having poor functional recovery on grooming and forelimb open field (, circles), despite nodes in this region showing less-severe injuries based on the degree biomechanical tissue deformation (, circle). This sub-network was also significantly enriched for 12.5 mm weight-drop contusions, yet we noticed that not all injuries of this type performed so poorly. To probe factors that might contribute to abnormally bad function, we drilled into this effect. We compared subjects in these nodes with 12.5 mm contusions that performed well on forelimb open field using a ranked Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test. The ranked KS test is analogous to a gene-set enrichment analysis here applied to identify predictor and outcome metric sets (rather than gene sets) that are most sensitive to group conditions (hypothesis testin...
Cross-validation and confirmation of hypertension hypothesis
The data-driven discovery of hypertension as a major predictor of SCI recovery from semi-structured big-data could potentially represent a 'capitalization on chance'. To explicitly rule this out, we performed two waves of additional analyses. First, we independently cross-validated the TDA-based data-driven discovery, by curating an additional data set from subjects with less-severe injuries (12.5 mm) from a separate round of the MASCIS trial (1994-1995, N =154) ( ) queried from the VISION-SCI repository. Nodes within the network that received thoracic 12.5 mm weight-drop injuries showed distinct subpopulations with significant differences in BBB locomotor recovery (, circles, P =0.01). KS testing of the good versus bad recovery subgroups within this network confirmed that hypertensive events (maximum MAP) during surgery predicted lower locomotor recovery in...
Cross-validation and confirmation of hypertension hypothesis
Second, we explicitly tested the formal hypothesis that perioperative hypertension predicts long-term outcome using a repeated measures general linear model (GLM) on the 1996 and the 1994-1995 data sets. Explicit hypothesis testing separately confirmed the hypothesis that perioperative MAP (covariate) predicted poorer functional recovery of BBB (dependent) between 1 and 6 weeks post injury (repeated measure). In both data sets, post-injury MAP (15 min after SCI) significantly predicted the main effect of recovery of BBB locomotion following injury (1996, F(5,20)=3.701, P =0.02; 1994-1995, F(5,110)=2.671, P =0.03).
TDA-based data-driven discovery versus traditional tools
The fact that TDA-guided discovery uncovered a novel finding that was hiding in plain sight in 20-year-old data, provides strong potential support for this approach. However, we wondered whether a similar set of results could have been revealed using traditional analytics. To test this, we pooled all data from MASCIS ( N =334) in the VISION-SCI repository and performed side-by-side bivariate correlational analysis and TDA ( ). Pearson correlation confirmation of the significant inverse correlation between elevated perioperative blood pressure and BBB functional recovery was performed by plotting a bivariate correlation matrix for MASCIS OSU trial subjects ( N =334) for all measures of survival, histology, perioperative vitals and blood gases, functional recovery, bladder health and weight over 1-6 weeks post SCI ( ). Blood pressure measures showing the most significant inverse c...
TDA-based data-driven discovery versus traditional tools
Although visualization and interpretation of the complex interactions between all the variables in this data set can, in theory, be achieved by simple correlation, this approach does not identify clusters of subjects that are most sensitive to these interactions across the full spectrum of variables. Navigating the same data set with TDA creates a syndromic map of all subjects based on the full network of correlations, enabling rapid comparative hypothesis testing about factors such as injury condition, recovery rate, autonomic factors or even gender differences (,, dropdown). All outcomes measured over time, including BBB locomotion, bladder function, weight, and perioperative blood pressure and blood gases were mapped onto the network for each time point (, dropdown). Additional mapping of enrichment for gender differences in the network revealed that subjects within the nodes th...
Methods
TDA was used to rapidly analyse and visualize clustering of individuals based on their similarity across hundreds of variables simultaneously ( ). TDA is an adaptation of the methods of topology, the mathematical discipline which studies robust methods of measuring and representing shape, to create compact visual representations of high-dimensional data sets. This is performed automatically within the software, by deploying an ensemble machine learning algorithm that iterates through overlapping subject bins of different sizes that resample the metric space (with replacement), thereby using a combination of the metric location and similarity of subjects in the network topology. After performing millions of iterations, the algorithm returns the most stable, consensus vote for the resulting 'golden network' (Reeb graph), representing the multidimensional data shape. The applicat...
TDA applied to graded unilateral cervical SCI in rats
Variables that were analysed included all endpoint data, excluding predictor information about categorical injury condition, gender or treatment. Endpoint data used for,, include a standardized measure of tissue compression for injury biomechanics across different contusion devices, terminal tissue pathology measured by lesion size and white/grey matter and MN sparing, and 6-week time-course data points for measures of daily or weekly weight change, CatWalk, grooming, paw preference in the cylinder, BBB hindlimb locomotion, a 4-point measure of forelimb locomotion and the IBB scale for object manipulation. Topologies were colour coded for each injury model, PC1 and PC2 distributions, histopathology and a few key examples of functional outcomes (grooming, paw preference, forelimb and hindlimb open field) at 7, 21 and 42 DPL. These were exported from the cloud into an HTML viewer...
Measurement outputs
What raw and processed outputs should exist?
Statistical analysis testing between groups for the identified measures were performed in Ayasdi v2.0 for group differences in the network, and plotted for box plots or histogra...
- Raw artifact
- Per-sample or per-animal endpoint measurements collected during the experiment
- Processed artifact
- Structured table with cleaned measurements ready for comparison
- Reported as
- Summary statistics and between-group or across-timepoint comparisons
How to cite this article: Nielson, J. L. et al. Topological data analysis for discovery in preclinical spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury. Nat. Commun. 6:8581 doi: 1...
- Raw artifact
- Per-sample or per-animal endpoint measurements collected during the experiment
- Processed artifact
- Structured table with cleaned measurements ready for comparison
- Reported as
- Summary statistics and between-group or across-timepoint comparisons
We identified the nodes within the topology that stood out as having poor functional recovery on grooming and forelimb open field (, circles), despite nodes in this region show...
- Raw artifact
- Per-sample or per-animal endpoint measurements collected during the experiment
- Processed artifact
- Structured table with cleaned measurements ready for comparison
- Reported as
- Summary statistics and between-group or across-timepoint comparisons
The TDA-identified subpopulation analysis suggested that minocycline and MP had effects on a subset of endpoints, in a subset of the individuals. To confirm the generality of th...
- Raw artifact
- Per-sample or per-animal endpoint measurements collected during the experiment
- Processed artifact
- Structured table with cleaned measurements ready for comparison
- Reported as
- Summary statistics and between-group or across-timepoint comparisons
Analysis plan
How should the outputs become interpretable results?
Acquisition
Collect raw experimental outputs with enough metadata to preserve sample identity, condition, and timing.
inferred from protocolPreprocessing / cleaning
Statistical analysis testing between groups for the identified measures were performed in Ayasdi v2.0 for group differences in the network, and plotted for box plots or histograms in GraphPad Prism 5 and analysed for significance using two-tailed t -tests and one-way ANOVAs in...
from paperScoring or quantification
Quantify the primary readouts for this experiment: Statistical analysis testing between groups for the identified measures were performed in Ayasdi v2.0 for group differences in the network, and plotted for box plots or histogra...; How to cite this article: Nielson, J. L. et al. Topological data analysis for discovery in preclinical spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury. Nat. Commun. 6:8581 doi: 1...; We identified the nodes within the topology that stood out as having poor functional recovery on grooming and forelimb open field (, circles), despite nodes in this region show...; The TDA-identified subpopulation analysis suggested that minocycline and MP had effects on a subset of endpoints, in a subset of the individuals. To confirm the generality of th....
from paperStatistical comparison
Statistical analysis testing between groups for the identified measures were performed in Ayasdi v2.0 for group differences in the network, and plotted for box plots or histogra...; We identified the nodes within the topology that stood out as having poor functional recovery on grooming and forelimb open field (, circles), despite nodes in this region show...; The TDA-identified subpopulation analysis suggested that minocycline and MP had effects on a subset of endpoints, in a subset of the individuals. To confirm the generality of th...; TDA-based data-driven discovery revealed a hidden finding in legacy data that MP was potentially detrimental in cervical SCI. To test whether the same might be true in thoracic...
from paperReporting output
Report representative outputs alongside summary comparisons for Statistical analysis testing between groups for the identified measures were performed in Ayasdi v2.0 for group differences in the network, and plotted for box plots or histogra..., How to cite this article: Nielson, J. L. et al. Topological data analysis for discovery in preclinical spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury. Nat. Commun. 6:8581 doi: 1..., We identified the nodes within the topology that stood out as having poor functional recovery on grooming and forelimb open field (, circles), despite nodes in this region show..., The TDA-identified subpopulation analysis suggested that minocycline and MP had effects on a subset of endpoints, in a subset of the individuals. To confirm the generality of th....
inferred from protocolStructured statistical methods
Statistical analysis testing between groups for the identified measures were performed in Ayasdi v2.0 for group differences in the network, and plotted for box plots or histogra...; We identified the nodes within the topology that stood out as having poor functional recovery on grooming and forelimb open field (, circles), despite nodes in this region show...; The TDA-identified subpopulation analysis suggested that minocycline and MP had effects on a subset of endpoints, in a subset of the individuals. To confirm the generality of th...; TDA-based data-driven discovery revealed a hidden finding in legacy data that MP was potentially detrimental in cervical SCI. To test whether the same might be true in thoracic...
source structuredSource and audit
What supports the facts on this page?
Evidence quotes (8)
To test the application of TDA combined with SVD to SCI, we assembled raw data from several common SCI models, including hemisections, weight-drop and force-driven hemi-contusion injuries to the cervical spinal cord (;, dropdown). Grooming behaviour and paw preference in a cylinder reveal graded levels of recovery ( ), that map to lesion size, tissue sparing and deformation (;, dropdown). However, measures of open-field locomotion for both forelimb (;, dropdown) and hindlimb (, dropdown) do not show much variability in recovery of function. In the syndromic topology, grooming function has the strongest visual mapping to lesion size (;, dropdown), whereas recovery of paw preference in the cylinder shows a stronger visual mapping with white matter sparing. Little to no variability is seen in the hindlimb open field (, dropdown), most likely because it was designed to measure hindlimb coordination following bilateral thoracic injuries, whereas these subjects received various grades of unilateral cervical injuries. There was some variance in the measure of forelimb open field for the most severe injuries (, circle), however, it did not map to the full range of lesion pat...
We identified the nodes within the topology that stood out as having poor functional recovery on grooming and forelimb open field (, circles), despite nodes in this region showing less-severe injuries based on the degree biomechanical tissue deformation (, circle). This sub-network was also significantly enriched for 12.5 mm weight-drop contusions, yet we noticed that not all injuries of this type performed so poorly. To probe factors that might contribute to abnormally bad function, we drilled into this effect. We compared subjects in these nodes with 12.5 mm contusions that performed well on forelimb open field using a ranked Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test. The ranked KS test is analogous to a gene-set enrichment analysis here applied to identify predictor and outcome metric sets (rather than gene sets) that are most sensitive to group conditions (hypothesis testing). KS tests between nodes within the high and low functioning groups uncovered an external predictor (not included in the generation of the network) that could account for functional differences: subjects were part of a preclinical trial of two anti-inflammatory drugs: minocycline and MP and no-dr...
The data-driven discovery of hypertension as a major predictor of SCI recovery from semi-structured big-data could potentially represent a 'capitalization on chance'. To explicitly rule this out, we performed two waves of additional analyses. First, we independently cross-validated the TDA-based data-driven discovery, by curating an additional data set from subjects with less-severe injuries (12.5 mm) from a separate round of the MASCIS trial (1994-1995, N =154) ( ) queried from the VISION-SCI repository. Nodes within the network that received thoracic 12.5 mm weight-drop injuries showed distinct subpopulations with significant differences in BBB locomotor recovery (, circles, P =0.01). KS testing of the good versus bad recovery subgroups within this network confirmed that hypertensive events (maximum MAP) during surgery predicted lower locomotor recovery in the chronic phase (KS=0.6, P =0.0009).
Second, we explicitly tested the formal hypothesis that perioperative hypertension predicts long-term outcome using a repeated measures general linear model (GLM) on the 1996 and the 1994-1995 data sets. Explicit hypothesis testing separately confirmed the hypothesis that perioperative MAP (covariate) predicted poorer functional recovery of BBB (dependent) between 1 and 6 weeks post injury (repeated measure). In both data sets, post-injury MAP (15 min after SCI) significantly predicted the main effect of recovery of BBB locomotion following injury (1996, F(5,20)=3.701, P =0.02; 1994-1995, F(5,110)=2.671, P =0.03).
The fact that TDA-guided discovery uncovered a novel finding that was hiding in plain sight in 20-year-old data, provides strong potential support for this approach. However, we wondered whether a similar set of results could have been revealed using traditional analytics. To test this, we pooled all data from MASCIS ( N =334) in the VISION-SCI repository and performed side-by-side bivariate correlational analysis and TDA ( ). Pearson correlation confirmation of the significant inverse correlation between elevated perioperative blood pressure and BBB functional recovery was performed by plotting a bivariate correlation matrix for MASCIS OSU trial subjects ( N =334) for all measures of survival, histology, perioperative vitals and blood gases, functional recovery, bladder health and weight over 1-6 weeks post SCI ( ). Blood pressure measures showing the most significant inverse correlations to BBB recovery were confirmed, with elevated diastolic blood pressure at the time of injury, showing the most significant negative correlations at multiple time points (3-6 weeks), with MAP and systolic blood pressure only showing a significant correlation to BBB deficits at 5 wee...
Although visualization and interpretation of the complex interactions between all the variables in this data set can, in theory, be achieved by simple correlation, this approach does not identify clusters of subjects that are most sensitive to these interactions across the full spectrum of variables. Navigating the same data set with TDA creates a syndromic map of all subjects based on the full network of correlations, enabling rapid comparative hypothesis testing about factors such as injury condition, recovery rate, autonomic factors or even gender differences (,, dropdown). All outcomes measured over time, including BBB locomotion, bladder function, weight, and perioperative blood pressure and blood gases were mapped onto the network for each time point (, dropdown). Additional mapping of enrichment for gender differences in the network revealed that subjects within the nodes that showed the strongest relationship between perioperative hypertension and BBB recovery were mostly males. Due to bladder complications being more pronounced in males following SCI, and the strong correlation between bladder function and health and recovery of locomotion, males may be more sensiti...
TDA was used to rapidly analyse and visualize clustering of individuals based on their similarity across hundreds of variables simultaneously ( ). TDA is an adaptation of the methods of topology, the mathematical discipline which studies robust methods of measuring and representing shape, to create compact visual representations of high-dimensional data sets. This is performed automatically within the software, by deploying an ensemble machine learning algorithm that iterates through overlapping subject bins of different sizes that resample the metric space (with replacement), thereby using a combination of the metric location and similarity of subjects in the network topology. After performing millions of iterations, the algorithm returns the most stable, consensus vote for the resulting 'golden network' (Reeb graph), representing the multidimensional data shape. The application of this method to our data sets creates clusters of subjects which appear as nodes (points) and relations among clusters are represented as interconnections ('edges' or lines) between the nodes ( ). Once the topological network is developed, rapid exploration of the full neurotrauma syndro...
Variables that were analysed included all endpoint data, excluding predictor information about categorical injury condition, gender or treatment. Endpoint data used for,, include a standardized measure of tissue compression for injury biomechanics across different contusion devices, terminal tissue pathology measured by lesion size and white/grey matter and MN sparing, and 6-week time-course data points for measures of daily or weekly weight change, CatWalk, grooming, paw preference in the cylinder, BBB hindlimb locomotion, a 4-point measure of forelimb locomotion and the IBB scale for object manipulation. Topologies were colour coded for each injury model, PC1 and PC2 distributions, histopathology and a few key examples of functional outcomes (grooming, paw preference, forelimb and hindlimb open field) at 7, 21 and 42 DPL. These were exported from the cloud into an HTML viewer to monitor recovery of each outcome over time in relation to injury model and tissue pathology (Supplementary Software 2, dropdown). Heat maps for the colour schemes of the flares represent the range of highest values (red) to lowest values (blue) for each respective outcome being visualized (for ex...
Machine-readable layer
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"text": "To test the application of TDA combined with SVD to SCI, we assembled raw data from several common SCI models, including hemisections, weight-drop and force-driven hemi-contusion injuries to the cervical spinal cord (;, dropdown). Grooming behaviour and paw preference in a cylinder reveal graded levels of recovery ( ), that map to lesion size, tissue sparing and deformation (;, dropdown). However, measures of open-field locomotion for both forelimb (;, dropdown) and hindlimb (, dropdown) do not show much variability in recovery of function. In the syndromic topology, grooming function has the strongest visual mapping to lesion size (;, dropdown), whereas recovery of paw preference in the cylinder shows a stronger visual mapping with white matter sparing. Little to no variability is seen in the hindlimb open field (, dropdown), most likely because it was designed to measure h..."
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"text": "We identified the nodes within the topology that stood out as having poor functional recovery on grooming and forelimb open field (, circles), despite nodes in this region showing less-severe injuries based on the degree biomechanical tissue deformation (, circle). This sub-network was also significantly enriched for 12.5 mm weight-drop contusions, yet we noticed that not all injuries of this type performed so poorly. To probe factors that might contribute to abnormally bad function, we drilled into this effect. We compared subjects in these nodes with 12.5 mm contusions that performed well on forelimb open field using a ranked Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test. The ranked KS test is analogous to a gene-set enrichment analysis here applied to identify predictor and outcome metric sets (rather than gene sets) that are most sensitive to group conditions (hypothesis testin..."
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"text": "The data-driven discovery of hypertension as a major predictor of SCI recovery from semi-structured big-data could potentially represent a 'capitalization on chance'. To explicitly rule this out, we performed two waves of additional analyses. First, we independently cross-validated the TDA-based data-driven discovery, by curating an additional data set from subjects with less-severe injuries (12.5 mm) from a separate round of the MASCIS trial (1994-1995, N =154) ( ) queried from the VISION-SCI repository. Nodes within the network that received thoracic 12.5 mm weight-drop injuries showed distinct subpopulations with significant differences in BBB locomotor recovery (, circles, P =0.01). KS testing of the good versus bad recovery subgroups within this network confirmed that hypertensive events (maximum MAP) during surgery predicted lower locomotor recovery in..."
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"text": "Second, we explicitly tested the formal hypothesis that perioperative hypertension predicts long-term outcome using a repeated measures general linear model (GLM) on the 1996 and the 1994-1995 data sets. Explicit hypothesis testing separately confirmed the hypothesis that perioperative MAP (covariate) predicted poorer functional recovery of BBB (dependent) between 1 and 6 weeks post injury (repeated measure). In both data sets, post-injury MAP (15 min after SCI) significantly predicted the main effect of recovery of BBB locomotion following injury (1996, F(5,20)=3.701, P =0.02; 1994-1995, F(5,110)=2.671, P =0.03)."
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"text": "The fact that TDA-guided discovery uncovered a novel finding that was hiding in plain sight in 20-year-old data, provides strong potential support for this approach. However, we wondered whether a similar set of results could have been revealed using traditional analytics. To test this, we pooled all data from MASCIS ( N =334) in the VISION-SCI repository and performed side-by-side bivariate correlational analysis and TDA ( ). Pearson correlation confirmation of the significant inverse correlation between elevated perioperative blood pressure and BBB functional recovery was performed by plotting a bivariate correlation matrix for MASCIS OSU trial subjects ( N =334) for all measures of survival, histology, perioperative vitals and blood gases, functional recovery, bladder health and weight over 1-6 weeks post SCI ( ). Blood pressure measures showing the most significant inverse c..."
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"text": "Although visualization and interpretation of the complex interactions between all the variables in this data set can, in theory, be achieved by simple correlation, this approach does not identify clusters of subjects that are most sensitive to these interactions across the full spectrum of variables. Navigating the same data set with TDA creates a syndromic map of all subjects based on the full network of correlations, enabling rapid comparative hypothesis testing about factors such as injury condition, recovery rate, autonomic factors or even gender differences (,, dropdown). All outcomes measured over time, including BBB locomotion, bladder function, weight, and perioperative blood pressure and blood gases were mapped onto the network for each time point (, dropdown). Additional mapping of enrichment for gender differences in the network revealed that subjects within the nodes th..."
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"text": "TDA was used to rapidly analyse and visualize clustering of individuals based on their similarity across hundreds of variables simultaneously ( ). TDA is an adaptation of the methods of topology, the mathematical discipline which studies robust methods of measuring and representing shape, to create compact visual representations of high-dimensional data sets. This is performed automatically within the software, by deploying an ensemble machine learning algorithm that iterates through overlapping subject bins of different sizes that resample the metric space (with replacement), thereby using a combination of the metric location and similarity of subjects in the network topology. After performing millions of iterations, the algorithm returns the most stable, consensus vote for the resulting 'golden network' (Reeb graph), representing the multidimensional data shape. The applicat..."
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"name": "TDA applied to graded unilateral cervical SCI in rats",
"text": "Variables that were analysed included all endpoint data, excluding predictor information about categorical injury condition, gender or treatment. Endpoint data used for,, include a standardized measure of tissue compression for injury biomechanics across different contusion devices, terminal tissue pathology measured by lesion size and white/grey matter and MN sparing, and 6-week time-course data points for measures of daily or weekly weight change, CatWalk, grooming, paw preference in the cylinder, BBB hindlimb locomotion, a 4-point measure of forelimb locomotion and the IBB scale for object manipulation. Topologies were colour coded for each injury model, PC1 and PC2 distributions, histopathology and a few key examples of functional outcomes (grooming, paw preference, forelimb and hindlimb open field) at 7, 21 and 42 DPL. These were exported from the cloud into an HTML viewer..."
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