Department of Neurological Surgery, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, United States; Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, United States.
Department of Neurology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, United States.
Neuroimage. 2019 Nov 15;202:116131. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.116131. Epub 2019 Aug 28.
Diffusion MRI tractography has been used to map the axonal structure of the human brain, but its ability to detect neuronal injury is yet to be explored. Here we report differential tractography, a new type of tractography that utilizes repeat MRI scans and a novel tracking strategy to map the exact segment of fiber pathways with a neuronal injury. We examined differential tractography on multiple sclerosis, Huntington's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and epileptic patients. The results showed that the affected pathways shown by differential tractography matched well with the unique clinical symptoms of the patients, and the false discovery rate of the findings could be estimated using a sham setting to provide a reliability measurement. This novel approach enables a quantitative and objective method to monitor neuronal injury in individuals, allowing for diagnostic and prognostic evaluation of brain diseases.
扩散 MRI 轨迹追踪已被用于绘制人类大脑的轴突结构，但它探测神经元损伤的能力仍有待探索。在这里，我们报告了一种新型的轨迹追踪技术——差异轨迹追踪，它利用重复的 MRI 扫描和一种新的跟踪策略来绘制具有神经元损伤的纤维束的确切片段。我们在多发性硬化症、亨廷顿舞蹈病、肌萎缩性侧索硬化症和癫痫患者中检查了差异轨迹追踪。结果表明，差异轨迹追踪显示的受影响途径与患者的独特临床症状非常吻合，并且可以使用假设置来估计发现的假阳性率，以提供可靠性测量。这种新方法可以实现对个体神经元损伤的定量和客观监测，从而可以对脑部疾病进行诊断和预后评估。
