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• Clinical Article •
Study of changes in brain functional networks in patients with cerebral small vessel disease under different burdens based on rs-fMRI and graph theory analysis
TAN Xiang  YANG Fan  YU Ruiyi  LI Wenfeng  NAN Yan  ZHANG Lin 

DOI:10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2025.12.009.


[Abstract] Objective This study combines resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) with traditional graph theory analysis methods to see how brain functional network indicators change in patients with different levels of cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD) and to study how this relates to cognitive function.Materials and Methods There were altogether 23 cases of patients with mild CSVD burden (CSVD-m), 22 cases of patients with moderate to severe CSVD burden (CSVD-s), and 21 cases of healthy controls (HC). All rs-fMRI and related cranial MRI imaging data, clinical and laboratory data, and related cognitive scale scores were taken. The differences in functional network between the three groups were analyzed, and the correlation between the difference data and brain regions and cognitive scale scores were analyzed.Results For clinical results, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) result in the CSVD-s group were lower than those in the HC group (P < 0.05). For global results, the CSVD-s group had lower global efficiency (Eg) and higher shortest path length (Lp) and nodal clustering coefficient (Cp) compared with the HC group; the CSVD-s group had higher Lp compared with the CSVD-m group (P < 0.05). For local results, compared with the HC group, the brain regions with reduced nodal efficiency (NE) in the CSVD-s group were in the right superior frontal gyrus orbital region and the left inferior parietal lobule, and the brain region with increased nodal clustering coefficient (NCp) in the CSVD-s group was in the left superior frontal gyrus orbital region. In the CSVD-s group, the brain region with decreased NE was in the left inferior parietal lobule compared with the CSVD-m group (both P < 0.05). For cognitive correlation analysis, in the left subparietal lobule, NE was positively correlated with MoCA scores (r = 0.339, P < 0.05).Conclusions Both global and local network results were changed in patients with different loads of CSVD, which showed that the brain's infomation-processing ability was reduced to different levels, and there was a compensatory system. Moreover, some of the changes in results were correlated with cognitive fuction, which offered a deeper understanding of the pathophysiological mechanisms behind the differences in their clinical symptoms on an imaging basis.
[Keywords] cerebral small vessel diseases；resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging；magnetic resonance imaging；graph theory；functional brain network；cognitive impairent

TAN Xiang   YANG Fan   YU Ruiyi   LI Wenfeng   NAN Yan   ZHANG Lin*  

Medical Image Center, the First Affiliated Hospital of Shihezi University, Shihezi 832000, China

Corresponding author: ZHANG L, E-mail: zhang123ct@sina.com

Conflicts of interest   None.

Received  2025-08-07
Accepted  2025-10-13
DOI: 10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2025.12.009
DOI:10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2025.12.009.

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