Wang Peijing, Li Wenjie, Zhu Huan, Liu Xingju, Yu Tao, Zhang Dong, Zhang Yan
Department of Neurosurgery, Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China.
China National Clinical Research Center for Neurological Diseases, Beijing, China.
Front Aging Neurosci. 2022 Jun 2;14:788661. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2022.788661. eCollection 2022.
Ischemic moyamoya (MMD) disease could alter the cerebral structure, but little is known about the topological organization of the structural covariance network (SCN). This study employed structural magnetic resonance imaging and graph theory to evaluate SCN reorganization in ischemic MMD patients.
Forty-nine stroke-free ischemic MMD patients and 49 well-matched healthy controls (HCs) were examined by T1-MPRAGE imaging. Structural images were pre-processed using the Computational Anatomy Toolbox 12 (CAT 12) based on the diffeomorphic anatomical registration through exponentiated lie (DARTEL) algorithm and both the global and regional SCN parameters were calculated and compared using the Graph Analysis Toolbox (GAT).
Most of the important metrics of global network organization, including characteristic path length (Lp), clustering coefficient (Cp), assortativity, local efficiency, and transitivity, were significantly reduced in MMD patients compared with HCs. In addition, the regional betweenness centrality (BC) values of the bilateral medial orbitofrontal cortices were significantly lower in MMD patients than in HCs after false discovery rate (FDR) correction for multiple comparisons. The BC was also reduced in the left medial superior frontal gyrus and hippocampus, and increased in the bilateral middle cingulate gyri of patients, but these differences were not significant after FDR correlation. No differences in network resilience were detected by targeted attack analysis or random failure analysis.
Both global and regional properties of the SCN are altered in MMD, even in the absence of major stroke or hemorrhagic damage. Patients exhibit a less optimal and more randomized SCN than HCs, and the nodal BC of the bilateral medial orbitofrontal cortices is severely reduced. These changes may account for the cognitive impairments in MMD patients.
缺血性烟雾病（MMD）可改变脑结构，但对结构协方差网络（SCN）的拓扑组织了解甚少。本研究采用结构磁共振成像和图论来评估缺血性MMD患者的SCN重组情况。
对49例无卒中的缺血性MMD患者和49例匹配良好的健康对照（HCs）进行T1-MPRAGE成像检查。基于通过指数李代数（DARTEL）算法进行的微分同胚解剖配准，使用计算解剖工具箱12（CAT 12）对结构图像进行预处理，并使用图分析工具箱（GAT）计算和比较全局和区域SCN参数。
与HCs相比，MMD患者中全局网络组织的大多数重要指标，包括特征路径长度（Lp）、聚类系数（Cp）、 assortativity、局部效率和传递性，均显著降低。此外，经多重比较的错误发现率（FDR）校正后，MMD患者双侧内侧眶额皮质的区域中间中心性（BC）值显著低于HCs。患者左侧内侧额上回和海马体的BC也降低，双侧扣带回中部增加，但经FDR相关性分析后这些差异不显著。通过靶向攻击分析或随机故障分析未检测到网络弹性的差异。
即使在没有重大卒中或出血性损伤的情况下，MMD患者的SCN全局和区域特性也会发生改变。与HCs相比，患者表现出不太优化且更随机的SCN，并且双侧内侧眶额皮质的节点BC严重降低。这些变化可能解释了MMD患者的认知障碍。
