2020 ISMRM & SMRT VIRTUAL CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION
08-14 August 2020
2020 ISMRM Awards
Chen, Po-Yuan
Chang Gung University
Topic:
Fibre-specific white matter degeneration in the patients with Progressive supranuclear palsy
Po-Yuan Chen, Yi-Ming Wu, Yi-Hsin Weng, and Jiun-Jie Wang
Synopsis
Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) is an atypical Parkinsonism but with a faster progressive course. Previous studies indicated that PSP patients showed not only gray matter volume decrease but also white matter tract degeneration. We use fixel based analysis to examine the difference in the fibre bundle (FD), fibre-bundle cross-section (FC) and combination of fibre density and bundle cross-sectional area (FDC) between patients with PSP and healthy controls. The results show that significant degeneration of white matter in PSP patients. The major advantage to this study is providing a fixel-based comparison that indicate more directly interpretable measures of structural integrity.
Introduction
Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) is an atypical Parkinsonism which shares similar clinical motor symptoms with Parkinson’s disease (PD) but with a faster progressive course. Although studies reported gray matter atrophy in the thalamus, insula, frontal and temporal gyri, PSP can be characterized by the pathological changes and degeneration affecting the white matter, particularly in the cortocispinal tract and cerebellar peduncle.
Fixel based analysis (FBA) has been used to characterize multiple fibre orientations within the voxel of interest. This technique allowed us to measure the total intra-axonal volume of white matter axons, therefore providing a method that can be used to detect degeneration within white matter tracts. FBA can be used to evaluate density of fibres within a fibre bundle (FD), fibre- bundle cross-section (FC) and combination of both fibre density and bundle cross-sectional area (FDC).
This study aimed to investigate the pattern of white matter degeneration in patients with PSP. We examined the difference in the FD, FC and FDC between patients with PSP and healthy controls.