MR analysis of regional brain volume in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis: neurological manifestation of a systemic disease

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate whether regional brain volumes in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) patients differ from matched control subjects as AIS subjects are reported to have poor performance on combined visual and proprioceptive testing and impaired postural balance in previous studies.

Materials and methods: Twenty AIS female patients with typical right-convex thoracic curve (age range,11-18 years; mean, 14.1 years) and 26 female controls (mean age, 14.8 years) underwent three-dimensional magnetization prepared rapid acquisition gradient echo (3D-MPRAGE) MR imaging. Volumes of 99 preselected neuroanatomical regions were compared by statistical parametric mapping and atlas-based hybrid warping.

Results: Analysis of variance statistics revealed significant mean volumetric differences in 22 brain regions between AIS and controls. Ten regions were larger in AIS including the left frontal gyri and white matter in left frontal, parietal, and temporal regions, corpus callosum and brainstem. Twelve regions were smaller in AIS, including right-sided descending white matter tracts (anterior and posterior limbs of the right internal capsule and the cerebral peduncle) and deep nucleus (caudate), bilateral perirhinal cortices, left hippocampus and amygdala, bilateral precuneus gyri, and left middle and inferior occipital gyri.

Conclusion: Regional brain volume difference in AIS subjects may help to explain neurological abnormalities in this group.

Figure 1

a–e: Brain images of an adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) subject illustrating the procedure for automatic parcellation of the whole brain into 99 regions. In (d), the light gray, dark gray, and white colors represent cerebrospinal fluid, white matter, and gray matter, respectively. The colors in b and e are randomly selected to represent the 99 neuroanatomic regions. These regions are much better appreciated on the original image analysis program and might not be fully represented in this gray-scale picture.