Associations of quantitative susceptibility mapping with cortical atrophy and brain connectome in Alzheimer's disease: A multi-parametric study

作者：Haojie Chen, Aocai Yang, Weijie Huang, Lei Du, Bing Liu, Kuan Lv, Jixin Luan, Pianpian Hu, Amir Shmuel, Ni Shu, Guolin Ma · 发表于：NeuroImage · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1016/j.neuroimage.2024.120555 · 被引用次数：19 · 研究领域：Advanced Neuroimaging Techniques and Applications、Functional Brain Connectivity Studies、Advanced MRI Techniques and Applications

Aberrant susceptibility due to iron level abnormality and brain network disconnections are observed in Alzheimer's disease (AD), with disrupted iron homeostasis hypothesized to be linked to AD pathology and neuronal loss. However, whether associations exist between abnormal quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM), brain atrophy, and altered brain connectome in AD remains unclear. Based on multi-parametric brain imaging data from 30 AD patients and 26 healthy controls enrolled at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital, we investigated the abnormality of the QSM signal and volumetric measure across 246 brain regions in AD patients. The structural and functional connectomes were constructed based on diffusion MRI tractography and functional connectivity, respectively. The network topology was quantified using graph theory analyses. We identified seven brain regions with both reduced cortical thickness and abnormal QSM (p < 0.05) in AD, including the right superior frontal gyrus, left superior temporal gyrus, right fusiform gyrus, left superior parietal lobule, right superior parietal lobule, left inferior parietal lobule, and left precuneus. Correlations between cortical thickness and network topology computed across patients in the AD group resulted in statistically significant correlations in five of these regions, with higher correlations in functional compared to structural topology. We computed the correlation between network topological metrics, QSM value and cortical thick...