Assessment of Brain Tissue Involvement in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus from Correlative Analysis of 1H Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy and Diffusion Tensor Imaging

Franklyn Arron Howe¹, Nidhi Sofat², Thomas Richard Barrick¹

Metabolite levels were quantified by 1H MRS in parietal and frontal brain regions of lupus patients and correlated with fractional anisotropy (FA) and median diffusivity determined by Diffusion Tensor Imaging in the same voxels. We investigated whether: a) neuronal damage represented by reductions in FA would correlate with reduced NAA; b) inflammatory processes would lead to a correlation of increased mI with ESR; c) global disease processes occur that lead to correlation of metabolite changes in frontal and parietal regions.