Identification and characterization of Huntington related pathology: An in vivo DKI imaging study
详细信息 查看全文
- 作者：Ines Blockx ; Marleen Verhoye ; Johan Van Audekerke ; Irene Bergwerf ; Jack X. Kane ; Rafael Delgado y Palacios ; Jelle Veraart ; Ben Jeurissen ; Kerstin Raber ; Stephan von H?rsten ; Peter Ponsaerts ; Jan Sijbers ; Trygve B. Leergaard ; Annemie Van der Linden
- 关键词：Neuroimaging ; Diffusional kurtosis imaging ; Diffusion tensor imaging ; Glia ; Transgenic rat model ; Huntington disease
- 刊名：NeuroImage
- 出版年：2012
- 出版时间：1 November, 2012
- 年：2012
- 卷：63
- 期：2
- 页码：653-662
- 全文大小：1155 K
文摘
An important focus of Huntington Disease (HD) research is the identification of symptom-independent biomarkers of HD neuropathology. There is an urgent need for reproducible, sensitive and specific outcome measures, which can be used to track disease onset as well as progression. Neuroimaging studies, in particular diffusion-based MRI methods, are powerful probes for characterizing the effects of disease and aging on tissue microstructure. We report novel diffusional kurtosis imaging (DKI) findings in aged transgenic HD rats. We demonstrate altered diffusion metrics in the (pre)frontal cerebral cortex, external capsule and striatum. Presence of increased diffusion complexity and restriction in the striatum is confirmed by an increased fiber dispersion in this region. Immunostaining of the same specimens reveals decreased number of microglia in the (pre)frontal cortex, and increased numbers of oligodendrocytes in the striatum. We conclude that DKI allows sensitive and specific characterization of altered tissue integrity in this HD rat model, indicating a promising potential for diagnostic imaging of gray and white matter pathology.