Li Meng-Jun, Yeh Fang-Cheng, Huang Si-Hong, Huang Chu-Xin, Zhang Huiting, Liu Jun
Department of Radiology, The Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha, China.
Department of Neurological Surgery, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, United States.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2022 Jan 27;16:751902. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.751902. eCollection 2022.
Differential tractography and correlation tractography are new tractography modalities to study neuronal changes in brain diseases, but their performances in detecting neuronal injuries are yet to be investigated in patients with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). Here we investigated the white matter injury in mTBI patients using differential and correlation tractography. The diffusion MRI was acquired at 33 mTBI patients and 31 health controls. 7 of the mTBI patients had one-year follow-up scans, and differential tractography was used to evaluate injured fiber bundles on these 7 patients. All subjects were evaluated using digital symbol substitution test (DSST) and trail making test A (TMT-A), and the correlation tractography was performed to explore the exact pathways related to the cognitive performance. Our results showed that differential tractography revealed neuronal changes in the corpus callosum in all 7 follow-up mTBI patients with FDR between 0.007 and 0.17. Further, the correlation tractography showed that the splenium of the corpus callosum, combined with the right superior longitudinal fasciculus and right cingulum, were correlated with DSST (FDR = 0.001669) in the acute mTBI patients. The cognitive impairment findings in the acute stage and the longitudinal findings in the corpus callosum in the chronic stage of mTBI patients suggest that differential tractography and correlation tractography are valuable tools in the diagnostic and prognostic evaluation of neuronal injuries in mTBI patients.
差异纤维束成像和相关纤维束成像是研究脑部疾病中神经元变化的新型纤维束成像方式，但在轻度创伤性脑损伤（mTBI）患者中，它们在检测神经元损伤方面的表现尚待研究。在此，我们使用差异纤维束成像和相关纤维束成像研究了mTBI患者的白质损伤。对33例mTBI患者和31名健康对照者进行了扩散磁共振成像检查。其中7例mTBI患者进行了为期一年的随访扫描，并使用差异纤维束成像评估这7例患者受损的纤维束。所有受试者均接受数字符号替代测验（DSST）和连线测验A（TMT-A）评估，并进行相关纤维束成像以探索与认知表现相关的具体通路。我们的结果显示，差异纤维束成像在所有7例随访的mTBI患者中均显示胼胝体存在神经元变化，错误发现率在0.007至0.17之间。此外，相关纤维束成像显示，急性mTBI患者中，胼胝体压部与右侧上纵束和右侧扣带束与DSST相关（错误发现率=0.001669）。mTBI患者急性期的认知障碍发现以及慢性期胼胝体的纵向发现表明，差异纤维束成像和相关纤维束成像是mTBI患者神经元损伤诊断和预后评估的有价值工具。
