Estudo anatômico da substância branca do lobo frontal: da técnica de Klingler à dissecção virtual por ressonância magnética (tractografia)

摘要

The fiber dissection technique is a classical method used by renowned anatomists from the past in order to demonstrate the white matter tracts of the brain. This technique involves layer by layer dissection of the white matter demonstrating the inner anatomic organization of the parenchyma. Due to the contemporary possibility of visualizing the encephalic white matter bundles in vivo by tractography based on diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), old anatomic fundamentals paradoxically have become more relevant currently. This paper has three objectives: to study the main white matter fibers using the classic method of dissection, and the virtual dissection by tractography; to estimate the reconstruction reliability of frontal lobe tracts based on the atlas created by the authors; and finally to determine the structures and variables in this study with the best indicators of reproducibility, with the aim of enabling its use for clinical studies. The anatomic and tractographic information used by the authors for the identification of the white matter tracts in a previous study were compiled and given to two observers with no experience in tractography. Whole-brain DTI scans were performed in 15 healthy subjects and white matter pathways from both hemispheres were reconstructed twice by each observer. Apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC), fractional anisotropy (FA) indices, volume (VOL), number of voxels (NVO), number (NTR) and length (LEN) of tracts were evaluated in six different tracts: arcuate (ARC), uncinate (UNC), inferior fronto-occipital (IFO) and superior longitudinal (SLF) fasciculli, genu of the corpus callosum (GCC) and frontopontine tract (FP). The measures of both reconstruction of each observer were compared to study the intraobserver concordance and the mean results of each observer were used to calculate the interobserver concordance. The quantitative analysis was evaluated by Pearson association coefficient (r) and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). The magnitude of this correlation was very high (ICC 0. 7-0. 9) or almost perfect (ICC 0. 9-1) for FA and ADC measures of every tract studied, intraobserver and interobserver. Almost all variables of IFO, GCC, ARC and SLF tracts showed ICC higher than 0. 7 on the interobserver analyses (excluding NTR of GCC and SLF and LEN of ARC). Between observers, the structures with more than high level concordance score were IFO, GCC, ARC and SLF, specifically for FA and ADC. The “virtual dissection” obtained by MRI (tractography) could reproduce and complement the anatomic knowledge of the white matter tracts achieved through the classic method. The atlas created by the authors is a way of understanding the three dimensional intrinsic brain anatomy for clinical purposes and had its reliability estimated.