Assessment of the early organization and maturation of infants' cerebral white matter fiber bundles: A feasibility study using quantitative diffusion tensor imaging and tractography
Assessment of the early organization and maturation of infants' cerebral white matter fiber bundles: A feasibility study using quantitative diffusion tensor imaging and tractography
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DOI：
10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.11.022
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发表时间：
2006-05-01
期刊：
影响因子：
5.7
通讯作者：
Le Bihan, D.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Dubois, J.;Hertz-Pannier, L.;Le Bihan, D.
人类婴儿在出生时特别不成熟，大脑的成熟，白质纤维的髓鞘形成，一直持续到成年。弥散张量成像提供了无创描述早期脑束空间组织的可能性，并提供了可能与行为发展相关的定量参数来跟踪大脑成熟。在这里，我们评估了研究18个1- 4个月大的健康婴儿主要白质束组织和成熟的可行性，使用针对未成熟大脑定制的特定获取方案（有15个方向的扩散梯度和700 s mm(-2) b因子）。使用FACT算法，尽管婴儿白质的各向异性较低，但我们能够跟踪晚年描述的大多数主要神经束。这种映射使我们能够提出一种新的量化方法，该方法基于在特定区域之间分裂的重建区域，它应该比基于兴趣区域的传统方法对束中的特定变化更敏感。我们观察到大多数束（胼胝体、小脑蒂、皮质脊髓束、脊髓丘脑束、囊体、辐射束、纵束和钩状束、扣带）在发育期间的分数各向异性和平均扩散率的变化。这一结果与已知的白质成熟和髓鞘形成阶段很好地一致，提出的方法可能为大脑发育提供重要的见解。(c) 2005爱思唯尔公司版权所有。
The human infant is particularly immature at birth and brain maturation, with the myelination of white matter fibers, is protracted until adulthood. Diffusion tensor imaging offers the possibility to describe non invasively the fascicles spatial organization at an early stage and to follow the cerebral maturation with quantitative parameters that might be correlated with behavioral development. Here, we assessed the feasibility to study the organization and maturation of major white matter bundles in eighteen 1- to 4-month-old healthy infants, using a specific acquisition protocol customized to the immature brain (with 15 orientations of the diffusion gradients and a 700 s mm(-2) b factor). We were able to track most of the main fascicles described at later ages despite the low anisotropy of the infant white matter, using the FACT algorithm. This mapping allows us to propose a new method of quantification based on reconstructed tracts, split between specific regions, which should be more sensitive to specific changes in a bundle than the conventional approach, based on regions-of-interest. We observed variations in fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity over the considered developmental period in most bundles (corpus callosum, cerebellar peduncles, cortico-spinal tract, spinothalamic tract, capsules, radiations, longitudinal and uncinate fascicles, cingulum). The results are in good agreement with the known stages of white matter maturation and myelination, and the proposed approach might provide important insights on brain development. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.