Cerebellar network changes in depressed patients with and without autism spectrum disorder: A case-control study.

Pathophysiological difference of depression in patients with and without autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) has not been investigated previously. Therefore, we sought to determine whether there were differences between non-ASD and ASD groups on resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) in patients with depression. We performed 3T MRI under resting state in 8 patients with depression and ASD and 12 patients with depression but without ASD. The ASD group showed increased functional connectivity in the cerebellar network of the left posterior inferior temporal gyrus and anterior cerebellar lobes compared to the non-ASD group in an analysis of covariance. Adding antipsychotics, antidepressants, benzodiazepines, nonbenzodiazepines, anxiolytics, hypnotics, or age as covariates showed a similar increase in functional connectivity. Thus, this study found that depressive patients with ASD had increased functional connectivity in the cerebellar network. Our findings suggest that fMRI may be able to evaluate differences in depressed patients with and without ASD.

Usefulness of breath-hold compressed sensing accelerated three-dimensional magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography (MRCP) added to respiratory-gating conventional MRCP.

PURPOSE: To clarify the clinical usefulness of breath-hold compressed sensing three-dimensional magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography (BH-MRCP) added to conventional respiratory-gating MRCP (RG-MRCP), we prospectively evaluated the image quality of BH-MRCP and compared it with that of RG-MRCP. We also evaluated to what extent the overall image quality was improved by adding BH-MRCP to RG-MRCP. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 113 patients who underwent RG-MRCP and BH-MRCP at a 3-T MR unit were enrolled. We set a scan time of approximately 180 s for RG-MRCP and 20 s for BH-MRCP before examination, and measured actual scan time and assessed image quality using a 5-point scale (5, good; 1, poor). Image quality scores of 1, 2 and 3 were considered clinically inadequate. Image quality scores of RG-MRCP and BH-MRCP were compared. In addition, we compared "RG-MRCP alone" and "hybrid MRCP" (the best-scoring image was picked from RG-MRCP and BH-MRCP when the RG-MRCP score was clinically inadequate). RESULTS: The mean actual scan time of RG-MRCP/BH-MRCP was 191/20 s. The mean scores of RG-MRCP, BH-MRCP and hybrid MRCP were 3.67, 3.35 and 3.92, respectively. The score of hybrid MRCP was significantly better than that of RG-MRCP (P <  0.05). The image quality of RG-MRCP was clinically inadequate in 43/113 (38 %) cases and the inadequate image quality was improved to be clinically adequate in 13/43 (30 %) cases by adding BH-MRCP. CONCLUSION: BH-MRCP brings added value to RG-MRCP because an additional examination of BH-MRCP could compensate for the image deterioration of RG-MRCP caused by motion artifacts.