Li Xianjun, Gao Jie, Hou Xin, Chan Kevin C, Ding Abby, Sun Qinli, Wan Mingxi, Wu Ed X, Yang Jian
Department of Radiology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Medical College of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China.
Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2012;2012:2298-301. doi: 10.1109/EMBC.2012.6346422.
Diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI), an extension of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), provides a practical method to describe non-Gaussian water diffusion in neural tissues. The sensitivity of DKI to detect the subtle changes in several chosen brain structures has been studied. However, intuitive and holistic methods to validate the merits of DKI remain to be explored. In this paper, tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) was used to demonstrate white matter alterations in both DKI and DTI parameters in preschool children (1-6 years; n=10). Correlation analysis was also performed in multiple regions of interest (ROIs). Fractional anisotropy, mean kurtosis, axial kurtosis and radial kurtosis increased with age, while mean diffusivity and radial diffusivity decreased significantly with age. Fractional anisotropy of kurtosis and axial diffusivity were found to be less sensitive to the changes with age. These preliminary findings indicated that TBSS could be used to detect subtle changes of DKI parameters on the white matter tract. Kurtosis parameters, except fractional anisotropy of kurtosis, demonstrated higher sensitivity than DTI parameters. TBSS may be a convenient method to yield higher sensitivity of DKI.
扩散峰度成像（DKI）是扩散张量成像（DTI）的扩展，它提供了一种描述神经组织中非高斯水扩散的实用方法。已研究了DKI检测几个选定脑结构细微变化的敏感性。然而，验证DKI优点的直观且全面的方法仍有待探索。本文采用基于纤维束的空间统计学（TBSS）来展示学龄前儿童（1 - 6岁；n = 10）的DKI和DTI参数中的白质改变。还在多个感兴趣区域（ROI）进行了相关性分析。分数各向异性、平均峰度、轴向峰度和径向峰度随年龄增加，而平均扩散率和径向扩散率随年龄显著降低。发现峰度分数各向异性和轴向扩散率对年龄变化不太敏感。这些初步发现表明，TBSS可用于检测白质纤维束上DKI参数的细微变化。除峰度分数各向异性外，峰度参数显示出比DTI参数更高的敏感性。TBSS可能是一种提高DKI敏感性的便捷方法。
