Assessing prenatal white matter connectivity in commissural agenesis

Complete or partial agenesis of the corpus callosum are rather common developmental abnormalities, resulting in a wide spectrum of clinical neurodevelopmental deficits. Currently, a significant number of these cases are detected by prenatal sonography during second trimester screening examinations. However, major uncertainties about a detailed morphological diagnosis and the clinical significance do not allow accurate prenatal counselling. Here, we were able to demonstrate the 3D connectivity of aberrant commissural tracts in 16 cases with complete and four cases with partial callosal agenesis using the foetal magnetic resonance imaging techniques of diffusion tensor imaging and tractography in utero and in vivo between gestational weeks 20 and 37. The 'misguided' pre-myelinated callosal axons that represent the bundle of Probst were non-invasively visualized, and they showed a degree of structural integrity similar to that of the callosal pathways of age-matched foetuses without cerebral pathologies. In two foetuses, we were able to prove, by post-mortem histology, that diffusion tensor imaging allows the depiction of the bundle of Probst, even during early stages of pre-myelination at 20 and 22 gestational weeks. In cases with partial callosal agenesis, an aberrant sigmoid-shaped bundle was prenatally depicted, confirming the findings of heterotopic interhemispheric connectivity in adults with partial callosal agenesis. In addition to the corpus callosum, other white matter pathways were also involved, including somatosensory and motor pathways that showed significantly higher fractional anisotropy values in cases with callosal agenesis compared with control subjects. A detailed prenatal assessment of abnormal white matter connectivity in cases of midline anomalies will help to explain and understand the clinical heterogeneity in these cases, taking future foetal neurological counselling strategies to a new level.