Early MRI performance and the evolution of premature infants diagnosed with periventricular leucomalacia / 中国小儿急救医学

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the early MRI performance and the evolution of premature infants who developed into periventficular leucomalacia (PVL) eventually.Methods Twelve premature infants diagnosed as PVL by MRI in the department of neonatology in Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University from Jan 2010 to Dec 2013 were selected,all of the cases underwent conventional MRI and diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) examination twice,the first examinations were finished in 2 to 7 days (mean 5.5 d) after birth and the second examinations were taken in 17 to 23 days(mean 20.3 d).Results The first examination showedall cases performed high signal intensity of periventricular matter,including 6 diffuse and symmetrical,3 linear and 3 clustered high signal.However,only 5 of the 12 cases showed slightly high signal on T1 weighted image with low signal on T2 weighted image on conventional MRI,the other 7 cases showed no change;for the reexaminationfoci of different numbers and sizes showed up in all cases,with the performance of low signal on T1 weighted image,high signal on T2 weighted image and low signal on DWI correspondingly.Conclusion DWI is superior to conventional MRI in finding and forecasting PVL;diffuse white matter damage have more probability to develop into PVL,severe local white matter damage such as multi-clustered and linear damage also can develop into PVL.