Abstract #1741

Cerebral Microstructural Alteration in Follow-up COVID-19 Patients: A Diffusion Kurtosis Imaging Study

Minhua Yu¹, Weiyin Vivian Liu², Qunfeng Wang³, Dan Xu¹, Yumin Liu³, and Haibo Xu¹

¹Radiology, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan, China, ²MR Research, GE Healthcare, Beijing, China, ³Neurology, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

This study aims to investigate the cerebral microstructural alteration of follow-up recovered COVID-19 (rCOVID-19) patients and explore the corrections of symptoms and microstructure changes. Decreased axial kurtosis (K_ax), radial kurtosis (K_rad), mean kurtosis (K_mean), mean kurtosis tensor (KT_mean) and increased fractional anisotropy (FA) in several brain regions of rCOVID-19 patients indicated demyelination and increased cell membrane permeability of cerebral cortex. Hyposmia was negatively correlated with K_mean and K_rad in right anterior cingulum of rCOVID-19 patients, partly explaining the residual olfactory impairment several months after recovery. DKI metrics can help reveal microstructural changes of CNS for rCOVID-19 patients.

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