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Accurately targeting specific regions of interest in the brain is pivotal for the success of neurosurgical procedures. For example, the outcome of brain tumor resection is improved dramatically when surgeons are better able to define surgical borders. Intraoperative magnetic resonance imaging (iMRI) helps reduce the risk of damaging critical areas of the brain and makes it possible to confirm a successful resection or determine the need for further resection prior to closing a patient's head and finalizing the surgery. Here we present a ground-based, iMRI system with a mobile 1-T cryogen-free imager. An ex-vivo experimental test of the novel iMRI system is performed to demonstrate preoperative and intraoperative imaging. The ground-based, mobile iMRI system presented here was successfully used to obtain intraoperative MR images without moving the imaging target or compromising conventional surgical techniques. The success of this experiment constitutes a major milestone towards the installation of a ground-based, high-field, mobile iMRI system in a hospital setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has been used to detect microstructural alteration and effect of surgical treatment of the trigeminal nerve root (TR) in patients with classical trigeminal neuralgia (CTN) underwent microvascular decompression (MVD). Patients with CTN without neurovascular compression (woNVC) is a special population of TN, however, the pathogenesy of CTN woNVC and the mechanism of internal neurolysis (IN) remain unknown. 21 patients with CTN woNVC who underwent IN and 20 healthy controls were included in this study. The differences in the means, kurtosis and skewness of fractional anisotropy (FA) and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) between the affected and unaffected nerves in patients and both nerves in controls were investigated by independent t -test and paired t- test respectively. Longitudinal changes of FA and ADC were correlated with outcome of IN via Spearman correlation coefficient. Significant differences were found in preoperative mean and kurtosis values for both FA and ADC of the affected side TR, compared to the unaffected side and control group respectively. However, these differences remarkably reduced postoperatively. Further, the Spearman correlation coefficient showed a strong negative correlation between decrease of ADC in the affected side and the surgical outcome in BNI total score. The changes of diffusive property of TR, especially the FA and ADC, provide alternative radiological evidence for evaluating the mechanism of CTN woNVC. The modification of DTI metrics could be an effective factor for providing potential noninvasive biomarkers for determining the prognosis of patients with CTN woNVC underwent IN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]