Brain Volumetric Measurements in Children With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A Comparative Study Between Synthetic and Conventional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Yingqian Chen; Shu Su; Yan Dai; Zhihua Wen; Long Qian; Hongyu Zhang; Meina Liu; Miao Fan; Jianping Chu; Zhiyun Yang

doi:10.3389/fnins.2021.711528

Brain Volumetric Measurements in Children With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A Comparative Study Between Synthetic and Conventional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Front Neurosci. 2021 Oct 25:15:711528. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2021.711528. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Yingqian Chen¹, Shu Su¹, Yan Dai¹, Zhihua Wen¹, Long Qian², Hongyu Zhang³, Meina Liu³, Miao Fan¹, Jianping Chu¹, Zhiyun Yang¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.
² MR Research, GE Healthcare, Beijing, China.
³ Department of Pediatrics, The First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the profiles of brain volumetric measurements in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and the consistency of these brain volumetric measurements derived from the synthetic and conventional T1 weighted MRI (SyMRI and cT1w MRI). Methods: Brain SyMRI and cT1w images were prospectively collected for 38 pediatric patients with ADHD and 38 healthy children (HC) with an age range of 6-14 years. The gray matter volume (GMV), white matter volume (WMV), cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), non-WM/GM/CSF (NoN), myelin, myelin fraction (MYF), brain parenchyma volume (BPV), and intracranial volume (ICV) were automatically estimated from SyMRI data, and the four matching measurements (GMV, WMV, BPV, ICV) were extracted from cT1w images. The group differences of brain volumetric measurements were performed, respectively, using analysis of covariance. Pearson correlation analysis and interclass correlation coefficient (ICC) were applied to evaluate the association between synthetic and cT1w MRI-derived measurements. Results: As for the brain volumetric measurements extracted from SyMRI, significantly decreased GMV, WMV, BPV, and increased NON volume (p < 0.05) were found in the ADHD group compared with HC; No group differences were found in ICV, CSF, myelin volume and MYF (p > 0.05). With regard to GMV, WMV, BPV, and ICV estimated from cT1w images, the group differences between ADHD and HC were consistent with the results estimated from SyMRI. And these four measurements showed noticeable correlation between the two approaches (r = 0.692, 0.643, 0.898, 0.789, respectively, p < 0.001; ICC values are 0.809, 0.782, 0.946, 0.873, respectively). Conclusion: Our study demonstrated a global brain development disability, but normal whole-brain myelination in children with ADHD. Moreover, our results demonstrated the high consistency of brain volumetric indices between synthetic and cT1w MRI in children, which indicates the high reliability of SyMRI in the child-brain volumetric analysis.

Keywords: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; brain volumetric measures; gray matter (GM); synthetic MR; white matter (WM).