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Quantifying Myelin Maturation in Healthy Babies Ilhaam M. Mahoui

JSHS · 2020

Eman Schools, Scott Persohn · Fishers, IN

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Overview

Chang Ho Paul R. Territo In the first years of life, a baby’s brain undergoes rapid growth. A major component of this growth is myelin maturation. Myelination is the process by which Schwann cells form a non-conductive fatty sheath around axons, which accelerates the electrical impulses from cell to cell. This sheath in the pediatric brain increases the degree of myelination with age. To assess the degree of myelination, a unique MRI scan is required to measure the changes in tissue proton relaxivity (T1). The goal of this project is to assess the T1 relaxation rate in the white and grey matter of the brain where the density of axons are highest. The T1 relaxation rates correlate with the degree of myelination at a given age, and as the brain matures the T1 decrease. A cross-sectional study measuring T1 relaxation rates in 146 brain regions (white and grey matter) were conducted for 122 MRI patient ranging from birth to 19 years old, and were grouped into the following: 0-6, 7-12, 13-24, and 25 months to adults. Summary statistics were generated for all age ranges and regions, and estimates of population variances were computed to describe the effective myelination rate as a function of age. In addition, test-retest analysis was performed to assess the degree of reproducibility. The degree of correlation for white (r = 0.88) and grey (r = 0.95) matter was very high showing high reproducibility across 25 randomly selected subjects. Analysis of average T1 relaxation rates for 56 and 90 regions of white and grey matter, respectively, show an age dependent decrease in T1 values of 0.19 and 0.27ms per month. These data will serve as a normal pediatric atlas to permit comparisons of the expected myelination levels with age and regions, thus improving the diagnosis for abnormalities during brain growth and development.

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  • JSHS 2020 Category not listed

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Source: Junior Science and Humanities Symposium

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