Abstract
IntroductionDiffusion Tensor MRI (DT-MRI) is a promising tool for the evaluation of brachial plexus pathology. Therefore, we introduce and evaluate a fast DT-MRI protocol (8min33s scanning with 5–10 min postprocessing time) for the brachial plexus.Materials and methodsThirty healthy volunteers within three age-groups (18–35, 36–55, and > 56) received DT-MRI of the brachial-plexus twice. Means of fractional-anisotropy (FA), mean-diffusivity (MD), axial-diffusivity (AD), and radial-diffusivity (RD) for the individual roots and trunks were evaluated. A stepwise forward approach was applied to test for correlations with age, sex, body-mass-index (BMI), bodysurface, height, and bodyweight. Within-subject, intra-rater, and inter-rater repeatability were assessed using Bland-Altman analysis, coefficient of variation (CV), intraclass-correlation (ICC), and minimal detectable difference (MDD).ResultsNo differences between sides and root levels were found. MD, AD, and RD correlated (P < 0.05) with bodyweight. Within-subject quantification proved repeatable with CVs for FA, MD, AD, and RD of 16%, 12%, 11%, and 14%, respectively.DiscussionThe DT-MRI protocol was fast and repeatable. Found correlations should be considered in future studies of brachial plexus pathology.
Highlights
Diffusion Tensor Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) (DT-MRI) is a promising tool for the evaluation of brachial plexus pathology
Within-subject quantification proved repeatable with coefficient of variation (CV) for fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD), axial diffusivity (AD), and radial diffusivity (RD) of 16%, 12%, 11%, and 14%, respectively
We found that the repeatability of our protocol was almost identical compared to the study by Tagliafico et al [27] with CVs ranging from 11–24% for FA and 8–17% for MD, compared to 6–20% for FA and 6–18% for the MD in our study
Summary
The aim of this study was to introduce and evaluate a novel DT-MRI approach for the brachial plexus, which requires minimal manual user input for registration, segmentation and analysis, and facilitates a repeatable quantification of the diffusion characteristics
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