Fig 1.
Flow diagram of patient selection.
Fig 2.
Images of trigeminal neuralgia, image processing steps, and rhizotomy.
(A) Coronal T2-weighted image showed CN V was compressed by the superior cerebellar artery on the affected side (long arrow), compared with the normal unaffected side (short arrow) in a 55 year-old women with TN. (B) Co-registration of diffusion tensor image with MP-RAGE image in the axial plane, and selection of voxels covering the largest cisternal segment of the trigeminal nerve on co-registered image. (C) Percutaneous CT-guided radiofrequency rhizotomy of the right side (affected side) of the Gasserian ganglion was performed one day after MRI scanning.
Table 1.
Patient characteristics.
Table 2.
Differences in DTI metrics between the affected and contralateral TN (N = 43).
Fig 3.
Box-and-whisker plots of DTI metrics between the affected and contralateral TN.
Box-and-whisker plots demonstrating medians and interquartile ranges (25–75 percentiles) of fractional anisotropy (FA), apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC), radial diffusivity (RD), axial diffusivity (AD), and volume. An outliner was removed in advance. (*P < 0.05)
Table 3.
DTI metrics associated with patient response to RFA (N = 36).
Fig 4.
Box-and-whisker plots of fractional anisotropy between effective responders and non-responders.
Box-and-whisker plots demonstrating medians and interquartile ranges (25–75 percentiles) of fractional anisotropy. An outliner was removed in advanced.