| Background and PurposeSensorineural hearing loss(SNHL) is a disabling disease, accounting for about 90% of all hearing loss, occurring in 2 to 4 cases each 1000 live births and affecting almost 40,000 children in the United States every year. Congenital or acquired abnormalities of the membranous labyrinth or cochlear nerve will ultimately result in sensorineural hearing loss.In recent years, many researchers using DTI to study the patients with SNHL. But most of them are limited to research the central auditory pathway and often use the voxel-based analysis(VBA) and region of interest(ROI) statistical analysis method, and the sample is usually small, and can not reflect the whole brain white matter changes from the general level. But The tract based spatial statistics(TBSS)method is a new method which can detect the abnormal cerebral white matter based on fiber tracking.The purpose of this study used DTI and tract based spatial statistics analysis method to study the cerebral white matter abnormalities for patients with SNHL, in order to provide more reliable imaging diagnosis basis for congenial sensorineural hearing loss patients. Materials and MethodsCollecting 41 cases of 2 to 7 years old children diagnosed by the clinical and audiological examination with profound sensorineural hearing loss and 15 cases of normal control group,and all of them should be performed with Germany Siemens skyra 3.0T MRI scanner to acquire conventional MRI and DTI data, and we used single-shot echo-planar diffusion tensor imaging(ss-SE-EPI) to acquire DTI data. At the same time T2 spc tra iso water imaging sequence were scanned to exclude inner ear malformation. In this study, we define profound congenital sensorineural hearing loss for pure tone audiometry hearing test threshold >90dB, and the patients with hearing loss after birth, hearing screening did not pass, and had not ear surgery and ototoxic drug treatment history previously, without central nervous system diseases and mental disorders. The pure tone audiometry hearing threshold <25dB for normal control group.Statistical method: Collecting the DTI data of all the case group and the control group. The imaging data were mainly processed by TBSS toolbox in functional MRI software library. Then compared data of the two groups by non parametric tests permutation and substitution method using FSL randomization software, and set the random arrangement to 5000 times. At last, using multiple comparison to analyze the data of the two groups, threshold-free cluster enhancement(TFCE) was used to correct type I error, and with ? = 0.05 as the test level. Results1.Compared with the normal control group, the fractional anisotropy values of congenital sensorineural hearing loss patients was decreased significantly in the left superior longitudinal fasciculus, inferior longitudinal fasciculus, left anterior thalamic radiation, left corticospinal tract and bilateral inferior fronto occipital fasciculus, and the difference was statistically significant(P < 0.05).2.Compared with the normal control group, there was no significant increase of fractional anisotropy values in the cerebral white matter area in patients with congenital hearing loss(P > 0.05).3.The radial diffusivity values of congenital sensorineural hearing loss patients was increased significantly in the bilateral superior longitudinal fasciculus, bilateral inferior longitudinal fasciculus, anterior thalamic radiation, corticospinal tract and bilateral inferior fronto occipital fasciculus relative to normal hearing controls, and the difference was statistically significant(P < 0.05). ConclusionThe results show that the fractional anisotropy value decrease and the ?? value increase of congenital sensorineural hearing loss patients in the left superior longitudinal fasciculus, inferior longitudinal fasciculus, left anterior thalamic radiation, left corticospinal tract and bilateral inferior fronto occipital fasciculus, existing fiber myelination adverse or demyelination. |
PDF Full Text Request