Regional homogeneity changes after MR-guided focused ultrasound thalamotomy in essential tremor: A rs-fMRI study

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• Clinical Article •

DENG Linlin LIN Jiaji WANG Xiaoyu LU Haoxuan XIONG Yongqin BIAN Xingbing ZHOU Jiayou PAN Longsheng LOU Xin

Cite this article as: Deng LL, Lin JJ, Wang XY, et al. Regional homogeneity changes after MR-guided focused ultrasound thalamotomy in essential tremor: A rs-fMRI study[J]. Chin J Magn Reson Imaging, 2022, 13(9): 1-6, 12. DOI:10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2022.09.001.

Abstract

[Abstract] Objective To explore long-term longitudinal changes in local spontaneous brain activity and correlation with clinical tremor scores after MR-guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS) in essential tremor (ET) patients.Materials and Methods In this study, we included 9 patients with essential tremor who underwent MRgFUS thalamotomy in the Chinese PLA General Hospital from January 2019 to May 2019 and 9 healthy controls with no statistical difference in age and sex, and 9 healthy volunteers with matched age and sex. We collected resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) data and Clinical Rating Scale for Tremor (CRST) at baseline, 6 months and 2 years after MRgFUS thalamotomy in ET patients and rs-fMRI data in healthy volunteers. We used a regional homogeneity (ReHo) approach in the REST plus v1.2 toolkit based on the MATLAB platform, based on whole-brain voxel paired-sample t-tests to identify difference in brain areas in ET patients at baseline and 2 years after MRgFUS thalamotomy, The ReHo values of this significantly different brain region in the HC and ET groups were extracted using the DPABI v5.1 toolkit, a two independent sample t-test was used to compare spontaneous and synchronous brain activity in this significantly different brain region between the HC and ET groups, and one-way repeated measures ANOVA was used to compare spontaneous and synchronous brain activity in this significantly different brain region between the ET group at baseline, 6 months after MRgFUS, and 2 years after MRgFUS. We used Spearman correlation analysis to correlate the trend between clinical tremor improvement in the ET group after surgery and the change in ReHo values in the ET group; and Pearson correlation analysis to correlate the rate of tremor improvement in the ET group 2 years after MRgFUS with the baseline ReHo values in the ET group.Results Findings showed that the significantly different brain regions in the ET group at baseline and 2 years after MRgFUS were located in the right postcentral gyrus. Compared with the HC group, the ReHo value of the right postcentral gyrus at baseline was significantly lower in the ET group (P＜0.01). There was no statistically significant difference in the right postcentral gyrus two years after MRgFUS in the ET group (P＞0.05). The ReHo value of the right postcentral gyrus increased in the ET group at baseline, 6 months after MRgFUS, and 2 years after MRgFUS (F=3.95, P＜0.05). There was a positive correlation between the improvement of clinical tremor and the change of ReHo value after operation; the improvement rate of CRST-A 2 years after MRgFUS in the ET group was negatively correlated with the baseline ReHo value in the ET group (r=-0.709, P=0.032).Conclusions MRgFUS thalamotomy helps relieve tremor symptoms in ET patients, MRgFUS thalamotomy affects the spontaneous and synchronous brain function of ET patients, and there is a correlation between ReHo and clinical score, which provide neuroimaging basis for the evaluation of nerve remodeling after MRgFUS.

[Keywords] magnetic resonance-guided focus ultrasound；regional homogeneity；essential tremor；resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging；clinical rating scale for tremor

Contributor Information

DENG Linlin¹ LIN Jiaji² WANG Xiaoyu² LU Haoxuan² XIONG Yongqin² BIAN Xingbing² ZHOU Jiayou³ PAN Longsheng³ LOU Xin^{1,
2*}

¹ School of Medical Imaging, Guizhou Medical University, Guiyang 550004, China

² Department of Radiology, Chinese PLA General Hospital/Chinese PLA Medical School, Beijing 100853, China

³ Department of Neurosurgery, Chinese PLA General Hospital/Chinese PLA Medical School, Beijing 100853, China

*Lou X, E-mail: louxin@301hospital.com.cn

Conflicts of interest None.

Publication Information

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 82151309).

Received 2022-04-15

Accepted 2022-08-25

DOI: 10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2022.09.001

Text

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