Brain Tissue Pulsatility is Increased in Midlife Depression: a Comparative Study Using Ultrasound Tissue Pulsatility Imaging

Abstract

Cerebrovascular disease (CVD) is consistently associated with late-life depression but poorly documented in midlife depression. It can be hypothesized that the relatively low sensitivity of conventional neuroimaging techniques does not allow the detection of subtle CVD in midlife depression. We used tissue pulsatility imaging (TPI), a novel ultrasound (US) neuroimaging technique that has demonstrated good sensitivity to detect changes in the pulsatility of small brain volumes, to identify early and subtle changes in brain vascular function in midlife depression. We compared the maximum and mean brain tissue pulsatility (MaxBTP and MeanBTP), as identified by TPI, between three groups of middle-aged females matched for age: patients with depression (n=25), patients with remitted depression (n=24) and community controls (n=25). MRI arterial spin labeling, white matter hyperintensities (WMHs) and transcranial doppler (TCD) were used as control conventional markers for CVD. We found no difference in the MRI and TCD measures among the three groups. In contrast, depressive patients showed an increased BTP related to the mean global brain pulsatility (MeanBTP) and no change related to large vessels (MaxBTP) in comparison with the remitted and control groups. US neuroimaging is a highly accurate method to detect brain pulsatility changes related to cerebrovascular functioning, and TPI identified an increased BTP in midlife depressed patients, suggesting early and subtle vascular impairments in this population at risk for CVD such as stroke or WMHs. Because high pulsatility could represent prodromal cerebrovascular changes that damage the brain over time, this paper provides a potential target for blocking the progression of CVD.

Association between change in brain gray matter volume, cognition, and depression severity: Pre- and post- antidepressant pharmacotherapy for late-life depression

“…There are several such mechanisms that may increase GMV: tissue volume changes could be due to synaptic changes (though this may be an unlikely mechanism in late-life), glial changes (which are thought to be the most dominant mechanism), and/or increases in dendritic length. Each of these changes could increase or decrease observed GMV, however several other mechanisms involve changes in fluid volume, where past studies have shown changes in pulsatility and other tissue properties that may affect volume (Desmidt et al, 2017).…”

Diagnostic Ability of Radiofrequency Ultrasound in Parkinson’s Disease Compared to Conventional Transcranial Sonography and Magnetic Resonance Imaging

“…The classical 1D cross-correlation [ 18 , 19 , 20 ] was used to obtain spatial point displacements in ROI along the scanning line from the acquired US RF signals. The calculation options used at this step were the same as described in our earlier article [ 14 ].…”

Ultrasonic Assessment of the Medial Temporal Lobe Tissue Displacements in Alzheimer’s Disease

“…The classical 1D cross-correlation was used for RF signal processing [19,36,37] to obtain displacements along the scanning line. The sensitivity of the displacement estimator was the same as our previous study [20] but, in the present study, several essential modifications of displacement signals post-processing were introduced.…”