White-matter-nulled MPRAGE at 7T reveals thalamic lesions and atrophy of specific thalamic nuclei in multiple sclerosis

• Published in: Multiple sclerosis p. 1352458519828297
• Main Authors: Planche, Vincent, Su, Jason H, Mournet, Sandy, Saranathan, Manojkumar, Dousset, Vincent, Han, May, Rutt, Brian K, Tourdias, Thomas
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England 01.07.2020
• Subjects: Thalamic nuclei; ultra-high field magnetic resonance imaging; multiple sclerosis; white-matter-nulled MPRAGE; multi-atlas segmentation
• ISSN: 1477-0970
• DOI: 10.1177/1352458519828297

Investigating the degeneration of specific thalamic nuclei in multiple sclerosis (MS) remains challenging. White-matter-nulled (WMn) MPRAGE, MP-FLAIR, and standard T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) were performed on MS patients ( n = 15) and matched controls ( n = 12). Thalamic lesions were counted in individual sequences and lesion contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) was measured. Volumes of 12 thalamic nuclei were measured using an automatic segmentation pipeline specifically developed for WMn-MPRAGE. WMn-MPRAGE showed more thalamic MS lesions ( n = 35 in 9 out of 15 patients) than MP-FLAIR ( n = 25) and standard T1 ( n = 23), which was associated with significant improvement of CNR ( p < 0.0001). MS patients had whole thalamus atrophy ( p = 0.003) with lower volumes found for the anteroventral ( p < 0.001), the pulvinar ( p < 0.0001), and the habenular ( p = 0.004) nuclei. WMn-MPRAGE and automatic thalamic segmentation can highlight thalamic MS lesions and measure patterns of focal thalamic atrophy.