Human brain mapping
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Human brain mapping · May 2019
Clinical TrialQuantitative neuroimaging measures of myelin in the healthy brain and in multiple sclerosis.
Quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques have been developed as imaging biomarkers, aiming to improve the specificity of MRI to underlying pathology compared to conventional weighted MRI. For assessing the integrity of white matter (WM), myelin, in particular, several techniques have been proposed and investigated individually. However, comparisons between these methods are lacking. ⋯ In eight WM tracts, all measures showed differences (p < 0.05) between MS normal-appearing WM and healthy control WM, with qT1 showing the highest number of different regions (8), followed by MWF-D and MTR (6), and MWF-G (n = 4). Comparing the methods in terms of their statistical sensitivity to MS lesions in WM, MWF-D demonstrated the best accuracy (p < 0.05, after multiple comparison correction). To aid future power analysis, we provide the average and standard deviation volumes of the four techniques, estimated from the healthy control sample.