Application of Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Imaging in the Diagnosis of Autism in Children

Frontiers in Medicine

article

Shilong Tang¹  Lisha Nie²  Xianfan Liu¹  Zhuo Chen¹  Yu Zhou¹  Zhengxia Pan¹  Ling He¹ 

[1] Department of Radiology, Children’s Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, National Clinical Research Center for Child Health and Disorders, Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Child Development and Disorders, Chongqing Key Laboratory of Pediatrics;GE Healthcare, MR Research China

关键词: children;    autism;    iron;    magnetic resonance imaging;    brain;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fmed.2022.818404

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Objective To explore the application of quantitative magnetic resonance imaging in the diagnosis of autism in children. Methods Sixty autistic children aged 2–3 years and 60 age- and sex-matched healthy children participated in the study. All the children were scanned using head MRI conventional sequences, 3D-T1, diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI), enhanced T2*- weighted magnetic resonance angiography (ESWAN) and 3D-pseudo continuous Arterial Spin-Labeled (3D-pcASL) sequences. The quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM), cerebral blood flow (CBF), and brain microstructure of each brain area were compared between the groups, and correlations were analyzed. Results The iron content and cerebral blood flow in the frontal lobe, temporal lobe, hippocampus, caudate nucleus, substantia nigra, and red nucleus of the study group were lower than those in the corresponding brain areas of the control group ( P 0.5, P < 0.05), among which multimodal technology (QSM, CBF, DKI) had the highest AUC (0.917) and DKI had the lowest AUC (0.642). Conclusion Quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (including QSM, 3D-pcASL, and DKI) can detect abnormalities in the iron content, cerebral blood flow and brain microstructure in young autistic children, multimodal technology (QSM, CBF, DKI) could be considered as the first choice of imaging diagnostic technology.

【 授权许可】

CC BY