Open AccessSchizophrenia Patients Demonstrate Both Inter-Voxel Level and Intra-Voxel Level White Matter Alterations
Author(s) -
Chuanjun Zhuo,
Xiaolei Ma,
Hongru Qu,
Lina Wang,
Feng Jia,
Chunli Wang
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0162656
Subject(s) - white matter , fornix , diffusion mri , corpus callosum , voxel , fractional anisotropy , external capsule , internal capsule , cingulum (brain) , neuroscience , medicine , psychology , magnetic resonance imaging , pathology , radiology , hippocampus
Fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) are the most frequently used metrics to investigate white matter impairments in mental disorders. However, these two metrics are derived from intra-voxel analyses and only reflect the diffusion properties solely within the voxel unit. Local diffusion homogeneity (LDH) is a newly developed inter-voxel metric which quantifies the local coherence of water molecule diffusion in a model-free manner. In this study, 94 schizophrenia patients and 91 sex- and age-matched healthy controls underwent diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) examinations. White matter integrity was assessed by FA, MD and LDH. Group differences in these metrics were compared using tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS). Compared with healthy controls, schizophrenia patients exhibited reduced FA and increased MD in the corpus callosum, cingulum, internal capsule, fornix and widespread superficial white matter in the frontal, parietal, occipital and temporal lobes. We also found decreased LDH in the corpus callosum, cingulum, internal capsule and fornix in schizophrenia. Our findings suggest that both intra-voxel and inter-voxel diffusion metrics are able to detect impairments in the anisotropic white matter regions, and intra-voxel diffusion metrics could detect additional impairments in the widespread isotropic white matter regions in schizophrenia.