Diffusion kurtosis model to evaluate the cochlear nerve deficiency in MRI images

Cochlear nerve deficiency (CND) is one of the primary causes of congenital hearing loss experienced by the new-born babies. The objective of this study was to assess the benefit of new diffusion kurtosis method in evaluating neuronal integrity of the cochlear nerve in order to assess cochlear nerve deficiency. In this study, the fourth-order kurtosis tensor has been estimated using the kurtosis model and the parameters such as mean kurtosis, axial kurtosis and radial kurtosis has been computed for the assessment of demyelination status of cochlear nerve. Estimations of these kurtosis parameters were carried out in the locations of internal auditory canal (IAC), lateral lemniscus (LL) and inferior colliculus (IC). The adaptive wavelet transform system was used to remove the rician noise from the diffusion data used for estimation the kurtosis parameters in the kurtosis model. The estimated kurtosis parameters found to be lower in cochlear nerve deficiency patients than normal control cases. The kurtosis parameters found to be capable of providing new tissue microstructural information and neuronal integrity and their demyelination status of cochlear nerve.