Investigation of Diffusion Tensor Indices by TBSS analysis and of Patients with symptoms of neuropsychiatric systemic lupus erythematosus

In this project, we attempted to study the NPSLE subjects without abnormal lesion in conventional MR imaging in order to investigate the effective imaging biomarkers in early detection of neurological degeneration. Brain diffusion-tensor imaging with TBSS analysis was performed for studying the micro-structural alternations in NPSLE patients. The preliminary results illustrated statistically significant differences of FA and MD in some important nerve tracts between NPSLE patients and normal volunteers. There also existed a significant difference between NPSLE patients with and without depression.