The Evaluation of Basal Ganglia in Pediatric Patients with Cerebral Palsy Using Magnetic Resonance Histogram Analysis

The aim of this study is to detect changes in the basal ganglia using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) histogram in patients with cerebral palsy (CP) who do not have pathological signal changes in the basal ganglia on conventional MRI images. A retrospective evaluation was made of the images of 40 children with CP and 60 children with no significant intracranial findings on brain MRI examination. The histogram parameters of mean, variance, skewness, kurtosis, 1st percentile (P), 10th P, 50th P, 90th P and 99th P were calculated for each patient and control group on the areas identified in the head of the thalamus, lentiform nucleus and nucleus caudatus and these were evaluated separately for each case. A significant difference was found between the groups in terms of the mean, kurtosis and 50th P values of histogram parameters obtained from the thalamus (p=0.001, p=0.002, p=0.025, respectively). A significant difference was found between the mean, skewness, kurtosis and 1st P values of histogram parameters obtained from the lentiform nuclei (p=0.021, p=0.005, p=0.015, p=0.035, respectively). A significant difference was found between the mean, kurtosis, 90th P and 99th P values of the histogram parameters obtained from the head section of the nucleus caudatus (p=0.002, p=0.03, p=0.004, p=0.042, respectively). Texture analysis can produce objective features that may indicate differences in the basal ganglia and thalamus in patients with CP. Texture analysis can identify changes in the basal ganglia in patients with CP who do not have pathological signal changes on conventional MRI images.