Abstract
Background and Purpose: Lots of clinical observations have found that there is a close relationship between the pathological changes of lateral pterygoid muscle (LPM) and temporomandibular disc displacement. On medical images, unfortunately, these occult dysfunctions of LPM could scarcely be detected by naked eyes. As the presence of intrinsic properties of the human body, textural feature is capable to effectively discover the subtle functional changes of involved tissues. This study aimed to evaluate the lateral pterygoid myospasm in patients with temporomandibular joint disorders (TMD) applying magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) texture analysis. Patients and Methods: From December 2019 to October 2020, totally nine patients suffered from unilateral spasm of LPM (which is a subtype of TMD) were evaluated by MRI, who were consecutively recruited from Xinjiang Medical University Affiliated First Hospital. Gray-level co-occurrence matrix method was used to analyze the textural features of MRI T2-weighted images with the maximum area of LPM scanned at axial (closed-mouth) plane. Independent samples t-test was performed to compare the relevant parameters of bilateral LPMs (healthy- and affected-side of one individual self-controlled trial). Results: There were no statistically significant values between the two sides of angular second moment, inversed differential moment, and entropy (P > 0.05). The contrast of the healthy-side (267.983 ± 45.952) was significantly higher than that of the affected-side (210.003 ± 29.613) (P < 0.05); and the autocorrelation of the healthy-side (4.536 ± 0.819) was significantly lower than that of the affected-side (6.563 ± 1.653) (P < 0.05). Conclusion: The texture contrast and autocorrelation have certain clinical meanings of diagnosis since they could identify the altered status of LPM, and could be considered as the efficient imaging biomarkers to assess LPM changes in patients with TMD.
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