Jo Young Tak, Lee Jungsun, Joo Sung Woo, Kim Harin, Shon Seung-Hyun, Yoon Woon, Hong Youjin
Department of Psychiatry, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Republic of Korea Navy, Donghae, Republic of Korea.
Psychiatry Investig. 2020 Apr;17(4):341-349. doi: 10.30773/pi.2019.0200. Epub 2020 Apr 8.
Diffusion tensor imaging has been extensively applied to schizophrenia research. In this study, we counted the number of abnormal brain regions with altered diffusion measures in patients with schizophrenia to enumerate the burden of abnormal diffusivity in the brain.
The public neuroimaging data of the COBRE project from SchizConnect were used for the study. The studied dataset consisted of data from 57 patients with schizophrenia and 71 healthy participants. FreeSurfer and FSL were applied for image processing and analysis. After verifying 161 regions of interest (ROIs), mean diffusion measures in every single ROI in all study participants were measured and normalized into Z-scores. Each ROI was then defined as normal or abnormal on the basis of a cutoff absolute Z-score of 1.96. The number of abnormal ROIs was obtained by each diffusion measure.
The numbers of ROIs with increased radial diffusivity and increased trace were significantly larger in the patient group than in healthy participants.
Thus, the patient group showed a significant increase in abnormal ROIs, strongly indicating that schizophrenia is not caused by the pathology of a single brain region, but is instead attributable to the additive burden of structural alterations within multiple brain regions.
扩散张量成像已广泛应用于精神分裂症研究。在本研究中，我们对精神分裂症患者中扩散测量值改变的异常脑区数量进行计数，以列举大脑中异常扩散率的负担。
使用来自SchizConnect的COBRE项目的公开神经影像数据进行研究。研究数据集包括57例精神分裂症患者和71名健康参与者的数据。应用FreeSurfer和FSL进行图像处理和分析。在验证161个感兴趣区域（ROI）后，测量所有研究参与者中每个单个ROI的平均扩散测量值，并将其标准化为Z分数。然后根据截止绝对Z分数1.96将每个ROI定义为正常或异常。通过每种扩散测量获得异常ROI的数量。
患者组中径向扩散率增加和迹值增加的ROI数量明显多于健康参与者。
因此，患者组的异常ROI显著增加，强烈表明精神分裂症不是由单个脑区的病变引起的，而是归因于多个脑区内结构改变的累加负担。
