Microstructural White Matter Abnormalities and Cognitive Dysfunction in Subcortical Ischemic Vascular Disease: an Atlas-Based Diffusion Tensor Analysis Study.

Recent studies in subcortical ischemic vascular disease (SIVD) suggest the involvement of white matter (WM) abnormalities underlying the pathogenesis of cognitive function impairment. Here, we performed magnetic resonance diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) on detecting WM damage and to investigate the correlations between DTI measures and cognitive dysfunction in SIVD patients. Fifty right-handed SIVD patients were recruited and divided into vascular cognitive impairment on dementia (VCIND) group and normal cognition (NC) group. Twenty-two VCIND patients and 28 NC patients underwent DTI scanning and neuropsychological assessment. Atlas-based analysis (ABA) was performed on each subject for extracting FA and MD measures from supratentorial tracts. Among VCIND, as compared to NC patients, decreased FA and increased MD were observed in all projection fibers (bilateral anterior, posterior limb, and retrolenticular part of internal capsule, anterior, superior, and posterior corona radiata and posterior thalamic radiation), association fibers (bilateral sagittal stratum, external capsule, cingulum, fornix, and stria terminalis, superior longitudinal fasciculus, superior fronto-occipital fasciculus, and uncinate fasciculus), and commissural fibers (genu, body, splenium, and bilateral tapetum of corpus callosum). Furthermore, we also found that MoCA scores correlated with DTI values in all supratentorial WM tracts. The results suggested that SIVD patients demonstrated abnormal WM connectivity in all supratentorial regions. Moreover, the severity of damage in WM tracts correlated with cognitive dysfunction.