Advanced Medical Research Center, Department of Neurosurgery, Iwate Medical University, Morioka, Japan.
J Neuroimaging. 2011 Apr;21(2):e102-8. doi: 10.1111/j.1552-6569.2010.00508.x.
To detect diffusion abnormalities in the trigeminal nerves of patients with trigeminal neuralgia (TN) caused by neurovascular compression (NVC) by using a high-resolution diffusion tensor imaging (HR-DTI) technique.
Thirteen patients with TN and 14 healthy controls underwent HR-DTI scanning. After extracting the trigeminal nerve using a tractography technique, we measured the fractional anisotropy (FA) and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC), and compared the contralateral ratios (CR) of these parameters between the patients and controls, and correlated these ratios with the cross-sectional areas of the nerves.
The CRs of the FA values for the trigeminal nerves of the patients (1.00±0.15) had significantly higher variance than those of healthy controls (1.00±0.05) (P<.05) and showed a positive correlation with the cross-sectional area of the nerves (r=0.81). In contrast, the CRs of the ADC values were not significantly different between the two groups (1.02±0.10 and 1.01±0.08, respectively) and had no significant correlation with cross-sectional area.
HR-DTI can detect an alteration in the relative FA values of affected trigeminal nerves and a correlation with atrophic changes in patients with NVC-induced TN.
利用高分辨率弥散张量成像（HR-DTI）技术检测由神经血管压迫（NVC）引起的三叉神经痛（TN）患者三叉神经的弥散异常。
对 13 例 TN 患者和 14 例健康对照者进行 HR-DTI 扫描。使用示踪技术提取三叉神经后，我们测量了各向异性分数（FA）和表观弥散系数（ADC），比较了患者和对照组这些参数的对侧比值（CR），并将这些比值与神经的横截面积相关联。
患者三叉神经 FA 值的 CR（1.00±0.15）明显高于健康对照组（1.00±0.05）（P<.05），并与神经横截面积呈正相关（r=0.81）。相比之下，两组间 ADC 值的 CR 无显著差异（分别为 1.02±0.10 和 1.01±0.08），且与横截面积无显著相关性。
HR-DTI 可检测到 NVC 引起的 TN 患者受影响三叉神经相对 FA 值的改变，并与萎缩性变化相关。
