DTIC, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain.
Fetal i+D Fetal Medicine Research Center, BCNatal - Barcelona Center for Maternal-Fetal and Neonatal Medicine (Hospital Clínic and Hospital Sant Joan de Deu), Institut Clínic de Ginecologia, Obstetricia i Neonatologia, IDIBAPS, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain; Centre for Biomedical Research on Rare Diseases (CIBER-ER), Barcelona, Spain.
Neuroimage Clin. 2018 Jan 28;18:103-114. doi: 10.1016/j.nicl.2018.01.006. eCollection 2018.
Neuroimaging of brain diseases plays a crucial role in understanding brain abnormalities and early diagnosis. Of great importance is the study of brain abnormalities and the assessment of deviations in case of maldevelopment. In this work, brain magnetic resonance images from 23 isolated non-severe ventriculomegaly (INSVM) fetuses and 25 healthy controls between 26 and 29 gestational weeks were used to identify INSVM-related cortical folding deviations from normative development. Since these alterations may reflect abnormal neurodevelopment, our working hypothesis is that markers of cortical folding can provide cues to improve the prediction of later neurodevelopmental problems in INSVM subjects. We analyzed the relationship of ventricular enlargement with cortical folding alterations in a regional basis using several curvature-based measures describing the folding of each cortical region. Statistical analysis (global and hemispheric) and sparse linear regression approaches were then used to find the cortical regions whose folding is associated with ventricular dilation. Results from both approaches were in great accordance, showing a significant cortical folding decrease in the insula, posterior part of the temporal lobe and occipital lobe. Moreover, compared to the global analysis, stronger ipsilateral associations of ventricular enlargement with reduced cortical folding were encountered by the hemispheric analysis. Our findings confirm and extend previous studies by identifying various cortical regions and emphasizing ipsilateral effects of ventricular enlargement in altered folding. This suggests that INSVM is an indicator of altered cortical development, and moreover, cortical regions with reduced folding constitute potential prognostic biomarkers to be used in follow-up studies to decipher the outcome of INSVM fetuses.
脑疾病的神经影像学在理解脑异常和早期诊断中起着至关重要的作用。研究脑异常和评估发育不良时的偏差非常重要。在这项工作中，我们使用了 23 例孤立性非严重脑室扩大（INSVM）胎儿和 25 例 26 至 29 孕周的健康对照的脑磁共振图像，以确定 INSVM 相关的皮质折叠偏离正常发育的情况。由于这些改变可能反映了异常的神经发育，我们的工作假设是皮质折叠的标志物可以提供线索，以提高对 INSVM 受试者后期神经发育问题的预测。我们使用了几种基于曲率的测量方法，从区域基础上分析了脑室扩大与皮质折叠改变的关系，这些方法描述了每个皮质区域的折叠情况。然后，我们使用了统计分析（全局和半球）和稀疏线性回归方法来找到与脑室扩张相关的折叠皮质区域。这两种方法的结果非常一致，表明在脑岛、颞叶后部和枕叶皮质折叠明显减少。此外，与全局分析相比，半球分析发现脑室扩大与皮质折叠减少之间存在更强的同侧关联。我们的发现通过确定各种皮质区域并强调脑室扩大对折叠的同侧影响，证实并扩展了之前的研究。这表明 INSVM 是皮质发育改变的一个指标，而且折叠减少的皮质区域构成了潜在的预后生物标志物，可以在后续研究中使用，以解读 INSVM 胎儿的结局。
