Application of Diffusion Tensor Imaging in Multiple Sclerosis Patients

The pathological changes associated with multiple sclerosis (MS) produce changes in uniformity of the neural networks of brain white matter that result in more perceptible changes on diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Increase in mean diffusivity (MD) and reduction in fractional anisotropy (FA) on DTI seen in MS patients may be due to the degradation of membrane or other cell structures. The aim of this study was to investigate the pathological changes made in the brains of MS patients using the DTI technique. This study was performed on 15 patients with multiple sclerosis. To investigate the location of plaques and normal appearing white matter (NAWM) some routine protocols for the brain, including T2-FLAIR and T2, were taken and to normalize the images of DTI, the T1 MPRAGE protocol was applied. After image processing using SPM, FSL, and MedINRIA software, the data were analyzed with the Mann-Whitney test. The results showed that there is a significant difference between the mean of MD (mean=4.3±1.01) and FA (mean=0.24±0.05) values in MS plaques and the mean of MD (mean=2.1±1.1) and FA (mean=0.55±0.56) values in the normal white matter (NWM) tissue of the control group (P=0.00001). Comparing the data obtained from the NAWM tissue with expanded disability status scale (EDSS) of patients showed that patients with higher EDSS show higher MD values (P=0.004) and lower FA values than patients with lower EDSS (P=0.001).Discussion & This study showed that factors of MD and FA in DTI technique can provide valuable information as imaging biomarkers about the MS plaques.