Role Of DTI In Multiple Sclerosis Flashcards
What is the background of multiple sclerosis?
- Chronic disease
- Dissemination of lesions in time and space
- Areas of inflammation, demyelination, gliosis
What are 10-15% of the patients?
Primary progressive MS
No clear cut relapses at the beginning
What are pathological changes of MS lesions?
- Oedema
- Inflammation
- Demyelination
- Remyelination
- Axonal loss
- Gliosis
Why is that patients with high lesion loads are not necessarily disabled as those with low lesion load?
- There is damage occurring in the white matter next to lesion between cortex and lesions in NAWM
- There are changes that cannot be see with conventional imaging but observed in the most advanced form of imaging
What is diffusion tensor imaging?
Comprises a group of techniques where calculated eigen values (lamda 1,2 and 3G and eigen vectors (epsilon 1,2,3) are used to create images reflecting various diffusion properties of tissues
What is the sum of eigenvalues called?
The trace
What are the averages of eigenvalues called?
Mean diffusivity or apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC)
What is DTI?
MRI technique that provides information about random motion of water molecules in vivo
What can you construct?
A model of how water diffuses within each voxel/pixel unit in the brain
What is found in white matter?
Highly aligned nerve fibres
Water diffusion tends to occur along long axis of the nerve fibre and tends to be restricted in lamda 1 and principal eigen vector
Where is diffusion generally greater in white matter?
The direction parallel to he axons - diffusion anisotropy
Define anisotropic
Biological tissues are highly structured and typically have different diffusion coefficient along different directions
Why is white matter highly anisotropic?
Parallel orientation of its nerve fibre tracts
In anisotropic material what can diffusion not be described by?
Single number but a [ 3 x 3 ] array called diffusion tensor
How can tensor be represented?
3D shape where it will look like an ellipsis with lamda 1 indicating the long axis of diffusion
What an you derive from these eigen vectors?
Certain diffusion matrix which characterise tensor/model
What is fractional anisotropy?
A measure of the directionality of the diffusion
What has higher anisotropy?
Voxel of brain which show high directionality or high directional preference
What has low FA?
- Grey matter
2. CSF
What is axial diffusivity?
- Lamda 1
2. Magnitude of the diffusion along long axis of diffusion tensor
What is radial diffusivity?
- Average lamda 2 and lamda 3 diffusion perpendicular to the lamda 1 along long axis of diffusion
Why DTI?
- Changes in diffusion parameters reflect pathological changes in the tissue structure (e.g. membranes, subcellular structure)
- It detects pathological abnormalities that are not visible on conventional MRI such as those in NAWM
Where can region of interest be performed on?
- Map diffusivity
2. FA maps
When do we use region of interest?
- When the study is focused on particular part of the vein
- The area is easily defined
- Processing time is no an issue
Regions of Interest where we know where we want to look first, we can pre-define them apriori and work out different diffusion values within those areas - performed maps - construct maps of mean diffusivity and FA
What are the limitations of region of interest analysis?
- Multiple ROI require a correction for multiple comparisons
- Poor inter-observer reproducibility
- undertaker formal measurement of reproducibility
- define guidelines
What is ROI and tractography?
- Define a given tract in all subjects
- Calculate FA along tract
- Compare FA between subjects