Alberto De Luca is an assistant professor at the Image Sciences Institute (ISI), Division Imaging & Oncology. Alberto studied at the University of Padova, Italy, where he received a BSc in Biomedical Engineering (2011), an MSc in Bioengineering (2013) and a Ph.D. degree (2017) defending a thesis entitled "Beyond DTI: non-Gaussian diffusion in the brain and skeletal muscle".
Alberto's research focuses on diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods, and their translation to clinical research, especially in the context of neurological diseases such as small vessel disease (in close collaboration with the Neurology Department - VCI Group), and cancer. Current key research interests are:
- Methods to quantify fiber specific properties in grey and white matter and accurately study brain connectivity;
- Harmonization of diffusion MRI data to enable large multi-center studies;
- Robust quantification of physiological properties (such as perfusion and free water) with inverse methods;
- Prediction of response to treatment in rare pediatric tumours (in collaboration with the Prinses Maxima Centrum, Utrecht) and in brain tumours;
- Prediction of clinical outcomes (such as cognitive decline) in patients at risk of (vascular) dementia machine learning;
Alberto has previously received funding from the Italian Ministry of Health, the Kika Foundation and Hanarth Fonds, and has received the "Seal of Excellence" from the European Commission.Â
Image Sciences Institute
University Medical Center Utrecht
Heidelberglaan 100
Q.02.4.45
3584 CX Utrecht
The Netherlands
email: a.deluca-2@umcutrecht.nl
office: Q.02.4.50
phone: +31 88 75 59863
secretary: +31 88 75 57772
Publications
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Vigabatrin-associated brain magnetic resonance imaging abnormalities and clinical symptoms in infants with tuberous sclerosis complex
Feb 2025 in Epilepsia 66 (2), p. 356-368 -
A framework for optimizing the acquisition protocol multishell diffusion-weighted imaging for multimodel assessment
Aug 2024 in NMR in Biomedicine 37 (8), -
Improving advanced intraoperative MRI methods during pediatric neurosurgery
Jun 2024 in NMR in Biomedicine 37 (6), -
Dynamic changes in perivascular space morphology predict signs of spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome in bed rest
Mar 2024 in npj Microgravity 10 (1), -
Detectability and accuracy of computational measurements of in-silico and physical representations of enlarged perivascular spaces from magnetic resonance images
Mar 2024 in Journal of Neuroscience Methods 403 -
Longitudinal changes in white matter free water in cerebral small vessel disease: Relationship to cerebral blood flow and white matter fiber alterations
Dec 2024 in Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism -
Enhancing cognitive performance prediction by white matter hyperintensity connectivity assessment
Dec 2024 in Brain : a journal of neurology 147 (12), p. 4265-4279 -
Microstructural white matter damage on MRI is associated with disease severity in Dutch-type cerebral amyloid angiopathy
Nov 2024 in Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism 44 (11), p. 1253-1261 -
Unraveling the relations between post-traumatic stress symptoms, neurocognitive functioning, and limbic white matter in pediatric brain tumor patients
Jan 2024 in Neuro-oncology advances 6 (1), -
Neuroimaging standards for research into small vessel disease-advances since 2013
Jul 2023 in The Lancet. Neurology 22 (7), p. 602-618 -
Neurological soft signs in adolescents are associated with brain structure
May 2023 in Cerebral Cortex 33 (9), p. 5547-5556 -
Reconstruction of the Corticospinal Tract in Patients with Motor-Eloquent High-Grade Gliomas Using Multilevel Fiber Tractography Combined with Functional Motor Cortex Mapping
Mar 2023 in AJNR. American journal of neuroradiology 44 (3), p. 283-290 -
Mean kurtosis-Curve (MK-Curve) correction improves the test–retest reproducibility of diffusion kurtosis imaging at 3 T
Mar 2023 in NMR in Biomedicine 36 (3), p. 1-17 -
Editorial: Is two better than one? Exploring tissue microstructure with multi-modal imaging: Quantitative MRI and beyond
Feb 2023 in Frontiers in Neuroscience 17 -
Anatomically informed multi-level fiber tractography for targeted virtual dissection
Feb 2023 in Magma - Magnetic Resonance Materials In Physics Biology And Medicine 36 (1), p. 79-93 -
Microstructural white matter integrity in relation to vascular reactivity in Dutch-type hereditary cerebral amyloid angiopathy
Dec 2023 in Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism 43 (12), p. 2144-2155 -
Quantitative diffusion-weighted MRI response assessment in rhabdomyosarcoma: an international retrospective study on behalf of the European paediatric Soft tissue sarcoma Study Group Imaging Committee
Nov 2023 in Pediatric radiology 53 (12), p. 2539-2551 -
Methodological considerations on segmenting rhabdomyosarcoma with diffusion-weighted imaging—What can we do better?
Jan 2023 in Insights into Imaging 14 (1), p. 1-15 -
Multimodal tract-based MRI metrics outperform whole brain markers in determining cognitive impact of small vessel disease-related brain injury
Sep 2022 in Brain structure & function 227 (7), p. 2553-2567 -
Insights from the IronTract challenge: Optimal methods for mapping brain pathways from multi-shell diffusion MRI
Aug 2022 in NeuroImage 257 p. 1-17 -
Functional MRI Studies in Friedreich's Ataxia: A Systematic Review
Mar 2022 in Frontiers in Neurology 12 p. 1-13 -
Topology of diffusion changes in corpus callosum in Alzheimer's disease: An exploratory case-control study
Nov 2022 in Frontiers in Neurology 13 p. 1-11 -
Association between Motor Planning and the Frontoparietal Network in Children: An Exploratory Multimodal Study
Oct 2022 in Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society 28 (9), p. 926-936 -
Improved sensitivity and precision in multicentre diffusion MRI network analysis using thresholding and harmonization
Oct 2022 in NeuroImage. Clinical 36 -
Cross-site harmonization of multi-shell diffusion MRI measures based on rotational invariant spherical harmonics (RISH)
Oct 2022 in NeuroImage 259 p. 1-12 -
Towards multicentre diffusion MRI studies in cerebral small vessel disease
Jan 2022 in Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry 93 (1), p. 5 -
European guideline for imaging in paediatric and adolescent rhabdomyosarcoma - joint statement by the European Paediatric Soft Tissue Sarcoma Study Group, the Cooperative Weichteilsarkom Studiengruppe and the Oncology Task Force of the European Society of Paediatric Radiology
Sep 2021 in Pediatric radiology 51 (10), p. 1940-1951 -
Strain Tensor Imaging: Cardiac-induced brain tissue deformation in humans quantified with high-field MRI
Aug 2021 in NeuroImage 236 p. 1-14 -
Quantitative magnetic resonance imaging of the brachial plexus shows specific changes in nerve architecture in chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, multifocal motor neuropathy and motor neuron disease
Aug 2021 in European Journal of Neurology 28 (8), p. 2716-2726 -
Thalamic energy dysfunction is associated with thalamo-cortical tract damage in multiple sclerosis: A diffusion spectroscopy study
Apr 2021 in Multiple Sclerosis Journal 27 (4), p. 528-538 -
Quantitative Muscle MRI Protocol as Possible Biomarker in Becker Muscular Dystrophy
Mar 2021 in Clinical Neuroradiology 31 (1), p. 257-266 -
The effect of gradient nonlinearities on fiber orientation estimates from spherical deconvolution of diffusion magnetic resonance imaging data
Feb 2021 in Human Brain Mapping 42 (2), p. 367-383 -
Tractography dissection variability: What happens when 42 groups dissect 14 white matter bundles on the same dataset?
Nov 2021 in NeuroImage 243 p. 1-18 -
Diffusion kurtosis imaging of white matter in bipolar disorder
Nov 2021 in Psychiatry Research - Neuroimaging 317 p. 1-9 -
Fiber orientation distribution from diffusion MRI: Effects of inaccurate response function calibration
Nov 2021 in Journal of Neuroimaging 31 (6), p. 1082-1098 -
Indices of callosal axonal density and radius from diffusion MRI relate to upper and lower limb motor performance
Nov 2021 in NeuroImage 241 p. 1-12 -
Zooming in on cerebral small vessel function in small vessel diseases with 7T MRI: Rationale and design of the “ZOOM@SVDs” study
Jan 2021 in Cerebral Circulation - Cognition and Behavior 2 -
Diffusion MRI harmonization enables joint-analysis of multicentre data of patients with cerebral small vessel disease
Jan 2021 in NeuroImage: Clinical 32 p. 1-14 -
Generalized Richardson-Lucy (GRL) for analyzing multi-shell diffusion MRI data
Sep 2020 in NeuroImage 218 -
Three Reasons Why Artificial Intelligence Might Be the Radiologist's Best Friend
Jul 2020 in Radiology 296 (1), p. 159-160 -
Variability in the analysis of a single neuroimaging dataset by many teams
Jun 2020 in Nature 582 (7810), p. 84-88 -
A diffusion kurtosis imaging analysis of white matter microstructural differences in bipolar disorder
Jun 2020 in Bipolar Disorders 22 (S1), p. 17-18 -
Data-Driven Identification of the Regions of Interest for Fiber Tracking in Patients with Brain Tumors
Nov 2020 in World Neurosurgery 143 p. e275-e284 -
Automated characterization of noise distributions in diffusion MRI data
Oct 2020 in Medical Image Analysis 65 -
Multi-center evaluation of stability and reproducibility of quantitative MRI measures in healthy calf muscles
Sep 2019 in NMR in Biomedicine 32 (9), -
On the sensitivity of the diffusion MRI signal to brain activity in response to a motor cortex paradigm
Dec 2019 in Human Brain Mapping 40 (17), p. 5069-5082 -
A Different Brain: Anomalies of functional and structural connections in Williams syndrome
Sep 2018 in Frontiers in Neurology 9 (sep), p. 1-10 -
A robust deconvolution method to disentangle multiple water pools in diffusion MRI
Nov 2018 in NMR in Biomedicine 31 (11), -
Multiparametric quantitative MRI assessment of thigh muscles in limb-girdle muscular dystrophy 2A and 2B
Oct 2018 in Muscle & Nerve 58 (4), p. 550-558 -
Evaluation of NODDI indexes in white and gray matter for the characterization of MS clinical features: pathological phenotypes, EDSS and disease duration
Oct 2018 in Multiple Sclerosis Journal 24 p. 435-436 -
Effects of perfusion on DTI and DKI estimates in the skeletal muscle
Jul 2017 in Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 78 (1), p. 233–246 -
Anterior mesencephalic cap dysplasia: Novel brain stem malformative features associated with joubert syndrome
Dec 2017 in American Journal of Neuroradiology 38 (12), p. 2385-2390 -
Neurogenetics of developmental dyslexia: From genes to behavior through brain neuroimaging and cognitive and sensorial mechanisms
Jan 2017 in Translational Psychiatry 7 (1), -
Epilepsy in multiple sclerosis: The role of temporal lobe damage
2017 in Multiple Sclerosis Journal 23 (3), p. 473-482 -
Automatic localization of cerebral cortical malformations using fractal analysis
Aug 2016 in Physics in Medicine and Biology 61 (16), p. 6025-40 -
Fractal analysis of MRI data for the characterization of patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder
Feb 2015 in Physics in Medicine and Biology 60 (4), p. 1697-716