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Semi-quantitative Assessment Using [18F]FDG Tracer in Patients with Severe Brain Injury
Published on: November 9, 2018
Voxel-based statistical analysis of thalamic glucose metabolism in traumatic brain injury: relationship with
Nuria Lull1, Enrique Noé, Juan José Lull
1Grupo de Informática Biomédica, Instituto de Aplicaciones de las Tecnologías de la Información y de las Comunicaciones Avanzadas (ITACA), Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain.
Objective:
To study the relationship between thalamic glucose metabolism and neurological outcome after severe traumatic brain injury (TBI).
Methods:
Forty-nine patients with severe and closed TBI and 10 healthy control subjects with (18)F-FDG PET were studied. Patients were divided into three groups: MCS&VS group (n = 17), patients in a vegetative or a minimally conscious state; In-PTA group (n = 12), patients in a state of post-traumatic amnesia (PTA); and Out-PTA group (n = 20), patients who had emerged from PTA. SPM5 software implemented in MATLAB 7 was used to determine the quantitative differences between patients and controls. FDG-PET images were spatially normalized and an automated thalamic ROI mask was generated. Group differences were analysed with two sample voxel-wise t-tests.
Results:
Thalamic hypometabolism was the most prominent in patients with low consciousness (MCS&VS group) and the thalamic hypometabolism in the In-PTA group was more prominent than that in the Out-PTA group. Healthy control subjects showed the greatest thalamic metabolism. These differences in metabolism were more pronounced in the internal regions of the thalamus.
Conclusions:
The results confirm the vulnerability of the thalamus to suffer the effect of the dynamic forces generated during a TBI. Patients with thalamic hypometabolism could represent a sub-set of subjects that are highly vulnerable to neurological disability after TBI.
