Department of Biomedical Imaging and Radiological Sciences, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC.
Neuroimage. 2010 Jan 1;49(1):539-51. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.07.042. Epub 2009 Jul 25.
Multiple system atrophy of the cerebellar type (MSA-C) is a degenerative neurological disease of the central nervous system. This study aims to demonstrate that the morphological changes of cerebellar structure, specifically, the cerebellum white matter (CBWM) and cerebellum gray matter (CBGM) from T1-weighted magnetic resonance (MR) images, can be quantified by three-dimensional (3D) fractal dimension (FD) analysis, which is a measure of complexity. Twenty-three MSA-C patients and twenty-one normal subjects participated in this study. The results of this study show that MSA-C patients presented significantly lower FD values compared to the control group, and that morphological change in the CBWM dominates the cerebellar degeneration. In addition, the FD analysis method is superior to conventional volumetric methods in quantifying the structural changes of WM and GM because it exhibits smaller variances and less gender effect. Since a decrease of cerebellar FD value indicates degeneration of the cerebellar structure, this study further suggests that the morphological changes of cerebellar structures (CBGM and CBWM) can be characterized by FD analysis.
多系统萎缩的小脑型（MSA-C）是一种中枢神经系统的退行性神经疾病。本研究旨在证明通过三维（3D）分形维数（FD）分析可以量化小脑结构的形态变化，特别是小脑白质（CBWM）和小脑灰质（CBGM）的 T1 加权磁共振（MR）图像，FD 是一种复杂度的度量。23 名 MSA-C 患者和 21 名正常受试者参与了这项研究。研究结果表明，MSA-C 患者的 FD 值明显低于对照组，并且 CBWM 的形态变化主导着小脑的退化。此外，FD 分析方法在量化 WM 和 GM 的结构变化方面优于传统的体积方法，因为它表现出较小的方差和较少的性别效应。由于小脑 FD 值的降低表明小脑结构的退化，因此本研究进一步表明，小脑结构（CBGM 和 CBWM）的形态变化可以通过 FD 分析来表征。
