Systematic validation of structural brain networks in cerebral small vessel disease.
Anna DewenterBenno GesierichAnnemieke Ter TelgteKim WiegertjesMengfei CaiMina A JacobJosé P MarquesDavid Gordon NorrisNicolai FranzmeierFrank-Erik de LeeuwAnil M TuladharMarco DueringPublished in: Journal of cerebral blood flow and metabolism : official journal of the International Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism (2021)
Cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) is considered a disconnection syndrome, which can be quantified using structural brain network analysis obtained from diffusion MRI. Network analysis is a demanding analysis approach and the added benefit over simpler diffusion MRI analysis is largely unexplored in SVD. In this pre-registered study, we assessed the clinical and technical validity of network analysis in two non-overlapping samples of SVD patients from the RUN DMC study (n = 52 for exploration and longitudinal analysis and n = 105 for validation). We compared two connectome pipelines utilizing single-shell or multi-shell diffusion MRI, while also systematically comparing different node and edge definitions. For clinical validation, we assessed the added benefit of network analysis in explaining processing speed and in detecting short-term disease progression. For technical validation, we determined test-retest repeatability.Our findings in clinical validation show that structural brain networks provide only a small added benefit over simpler global white matter diffusion metrics and do not capture short-term disease progression. Test-retest reliability was excellent for most brain networks. Our findings question the added value of brain network analysis in clinical applications in SVD and highlight the utility of simpler diffusion MRI based markers.
Keyphrases
- network analysis
- white matter
- resting state
- contrast enhanced
- magnetic resonance imaging
- cerebral ischemia
- functional connectivity
- multiple sclerosis
- end stage renal disease
- diffusion weighted imaging
- chronic kidney disease
- lymph node
- magnetic resonance
- newly diagnosed
- ejection fraction
- computed tomography
- blood brain barrier
- patient reported