A multi-shell multi-tissue diffusion study of brain connectivity in early multiple sclerosis:

Background:The potential of multi-shell diffusion imaging to produce accurate brain connectivity metrics able to unravel key pathophysiological processes in multiple sclerosis (MS) has scarcely been investigated.Objective:To test, in patients with a clinically isolated syndrome (CIS), whether multi-shell imaging-derived connectivity metrics can differentiate patients from controls, correlate with clinical measures, and perform better than metrics obtained with conventional single-shell protocols.Methods:Nineteen patients within 3 months from the CIS and 12 healthy controls underwent anatomical and 53-direction multi-shell diffusion-weighted 3T images. Patients were cognitively assessed. Voxel-wise fibre orientation distribution functions were estimated and used to obtain network metrics. These were also calculated using a conventional single-shell diffusion protocol. Through linear regression, we obtained effect sizes and standardised regression coefficients.Results:Patients had lower mean nodal strength ...