Abstract
BackgroundThe aim of this study was to investigate alterations in structural connectivity and structural co-variance network in patients with focal cortical dysplasia (FCD).MethodsWe enrolled 37 patients with FCD and 35 healthy controls. All subjects underwent brain MRI with the same scanner and with the same protocol, which included diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and T1-weighted imaging. We analyzed the structural connectivity based on DTI, and structural co-variance network based on the structural volume with T1-weighted imaging. We created a connectivity matrix and obtained network measures from the matrix using the graph theory. We tested the difference in network measure between patients with FCD and healthy controls.ResultsIn the structural connectivity analysis, we found that the local efficiency in patients with FCD was significantly lower than in healthy controls (2.390 vs. 2.578, p = 0.031). Structural co-variance network analysis revealed that the mean clustering coefficient, global efficiency, local efficiency, and transitivity were significantly decreased in patients with FCD compared to those in healthy controls (0.527 vs. 0.635, p = 0.036; 0.545 vs. 0.648, p = 0.026; 2.699 vs. 3.801, p = 0.019; 0.791 vs. 0.954, p = 0.026, respectively).ConclusionsWe demonstrate that there are significant alterations in structural connectivity, based on DTI, and structural co-variance network, based on the structural volume, in patients with FCD compared to healthy controls. These findings suggest that focal lesions with FCD could affect the whole-brain network and that FCD is a network disease.
Highlights
The aim of this study was to investigate alterations in structural connectivity and structural covariance network in patients with focal cortical dysplasia (FCD)
We investigated the alterations in structural connectivity based on diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and structural covariance network based on the structural volume, using graph theory, in patients with FCD, compared to healthy controls
In this study, we found that there were significant alterations in structural connectivity and structural covariance network in patients with FCD compared to healthy controls
Summary
The aim of this study was to investigate alterations in structural connectivity and structural covariance network in patients with focal cortical dysplasia (FCD). FCD is one of the most common major congenital malformations in patients with epilepsy, with a prevalence of 48 % [4]. Graph theory can summarize a complex network in the simplest form, as a connection matrix. This can offer important new insights into the structure of the networked brain systems [12]. Based on the previous researches regarding FCD, [15,16,17,18,19] we can predict that the global structural connectivity or co-variance network in patients with FCD have decreased integration and segregation in brain network topology
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