Table of Contents
Perspectives
Practice Perspectives
Research Perspectives
General Contents
- MRI Evidence of Altered Callosal Sodium in Mild Traumatic Brain Injury
Eleven patients with a history of mild traumatic brain injury and 10 age- and sex-matched controls underwent sodium MR imaging using a 3T scanner. Higher total sodium concentration in the genu and lower total sodium concentration in the splenium was seen in patients with mild traumatic brain injury compared with controls. The ratio of genu total sodium concentration to splenium total sodium concentration was also higher in patients with mild traumatic brain injury. The total sodium concentration appears to be altered beyond the immediate postinjury phase, and further work is needed to understand the relationship to persistent symptoms and outcome.
- Abnormal Cerebral Perfusion Profile in Older Adults with HIV-Associated Neurocognitive Disorder: Discriminative Power of Arterial Spin-Labeling
CBF data from the UCSF HIV Over 60 Cohort and the Alzheimer Disease Neuroimaging Initiative were retrospectively evaluated to identify 19 HIV+ older adults, all with plasma viral suppression (including 5 with HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder); 13 healthy, age-matched controls; and 19 participants with early mild cognitive impairment. When accounting for age, education, sex, and vascular risk factors, the HIV+ participants demonstrated alterations in regional cerebral perfusion, including hypoperfusion of bilateral temporal, parietal, and occipital brain regions. This study found significant changes in specific CBF patterns associated with HIV status despite viral suppression.
- Does Phase-Contrast Imaging through the Cerebral Aqueduct Predict the Outcome of Lumbar CSF Drainage or Shunt Surgery in Patients with Suspected Adult Hydrocephalus?
In this retrospective study, the phase-contrast MR imaging of 185 patients with suspected chronic adult hydrocephalus was evaluated using the CSF Flow software package. Decision-making for shunt placement was performed in this cohort on the basis of clinical assessment alone without the availability of quantitative phase-contrast MRI results. The authors evaluated the response to lumbar puncture or lumbar drainage and shunt surgery using quantitative tests such as the Tinetti Test, the Timed Up and Go, and the Mini-Mental State Examination and qualitative measures of gait, urinary, and cognitive symptom improvement before and after lumbar puncture/lumbar drainage and shunt surgery. This study suggests that the results of phase-contrast MR imaging through the cerebral aqueduct alone should not be used to select patients for diagnostic or therapeutic CSF diversion.
- Toward Better Understanding of Flow Diversion in Bifurcation Aneurysms
Fundamental electric and fluid dynamics principles were applied to generate equations describing the relationships between changes in flow and the degree of vessel coverage in settings of variable collateral support to the jailed territory. The authors studied a simplified hypothetic system with minimum assumptions to generate the most conservative outcomes. Up to 30% metal coverage of any branch territory is very likely to be well-tolerated regardless of device or artery size or the availability of immediate collateral support, provided that no acute thrombus forms to further reduce jailed territory perfusion.
- Peeking into the Black Box of Coregistration in Clinical fMRI: Which Registration Methods Are Used and How Well Do They Perform?
This retrospective study of presurgical fMRI for brain tumors compares nonregistered images and 5 registration cost functions: Hellinger, mutual information, normalized mutual information, correlation ratio, and local Pearson correlation. To adjudicate the accuracy of coregistration, the authors edge-enhanced echo-planar maps and rated them for alignment with structural anatomy. The local Pearson correlation is a special-purpose cost function specifically designed for T2*–T1 coregistration and should be more widely incorporated into software tools as a better method for coregistration in clinical fMRI.
- MRI, Magnetoencephalography, and Surgical Outcome of Oligodendrocytosis versus Focal Cortical Dysplasia Type I
Oligodendrocytosis includesoligodendroglial hyperplasia, oligodendrogliosis, and oligodendroglial-like cells in the white matter, gray matter, or both from children with medically intractable epilepsy. Focal cortical dysplasia I includes radial and tangential cortical dyslamination. In this study, MRI, magnetoencephalography, type of operation, location, and seizure outcome of oligodendrocytosis, focal cortical dysplasia I, and oligodendrocytosis + focal cortical dysplasia I were compared. There were no significant differences in the type of seizures, focal or nonfocal epileptiform discharges, magnetoencephalography, and MR imaging features among those with oligodendrocytosis, focal cortical dysplasia I, or oligodendrocytosis + focal cortical dysplasia I. The findings suggest that oligodendrocytosis may represent a mild spectrum of malformations of cortical development.
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