Morphometric features of drug-resistant essential tremor and recovery after stereotactic radiosurgical thalamotomy

Impact of biologically effective dose on tremor decrease after stereotactic radiosurgical thalamotomy for essential tremor: a retrospective longitudinal analysis

Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) is one of the surgical alternatives for drug-resistant essential tremor (ET). Here, we aimed at evaluating whether biologically effective dose (BEDGy2.47) is relevant for tremor improvement after stereotactic radiosurgical thalamotomy in a population of patients treated with one (unplugged) isocenter and a uniform dose of 130 Gy. This is a retrospective longitudinal single center study. Seventy-eight consecutive patients were clinically analyzed. Mean age was 69.1 years (median 71, range 36-88). Mean follow-up period was 14 months (median 12, 3-36). Tremor improvement was assessed at 12 months after SRS using the ET rating assessment scale (TETRAS, continuous outcome) and binary (binary outcome). BED was defined for an alpha/beta of 2.47, based upon previous studies considering such a value for the normal brain. Mean BED was 4573.1 Gy2.47 (median 4612, 4022.1-4944.7). Mean beam-on time was 64.7 min (median 61.4; 46.8-98.5). There was a statically significant correlation between delta (follow-up minus baseline) in TETRAS (total) with BED (p = 0.04; beta coefficient - 0.029) and beam-on time (p = 0.03; beta coefficient 0.57) but also between TETRAS (ADL) with BED (p = 0.02; beta coefficient 0.038) and beam-on time (p = 0.01; beta coefficient 0.71). Fractional polynomial multivariate regression suggested that a BED > 4600 Gy2.47 and a beam-on time > 70 min did not further increase clinical efficacy (binary outcome). Adverse radiation events (ARE) were defined as larger MR signature on 1-year follow-up MRI and were present in 7 out of 78 (8.9%) cases, receiving a mean BED of 4650 Gy2.47 (median 4650, range 4466-4894). They were clinically relevant with transient hemiparesis in 5 (6.4%) patients, all with BED values higher than 4500 Gy2.47. Tremor improvement was correlated with BED Gy2.47 after SRS for drug-resistant ET. An optimal BED value for tremor improvement was 4300-4500 Gy2.47. ARE appeared for a BED of more than 4500 Gy2.47. Such finding should be validated in larger cohorts.

Cortical involvement in essential tremor with and without rest tremor: a machine learning study

INTRODUCTION

There is some debate on the relationship between essential tremor with rest tremor (rET) and the classic ET syndrome, and only few MRI studies compared ET and rET patients. This study aimed to explore structural cortical differences between ET and rET, to improve the knowledge of these tremor syndromes.

METHODS

Thirty-three ET patients, 30 rET patients and 45 control subjects (HC) were enrolled. Several MR morphometric variables (thickness, surface area, volume, roughness, mean curvature) of brain cortical regions were extracted using Freesurfer on T1-weighted images and compared among groups. The performance of a machine learning approach (XGBoost) using the extracted morphometric features was tested in discriminating between ET and rET patients.

RESULTS

rET patients showed increased roughness and mean curvature in some fronto-temporal areas compared with HC and ET, and these metrics significantly correlated with cognitive scores. Cortical volume in the left pars opercularis was also lower in rET than in ET patients. No differences were found between ET and HC. XGBoost discriminated between rET and ET with mean AUC of 0.86 ± 0.11 in cross-validation analysis, using a model based on cortical volume. Cortical volume in the left pars opercularis was the most informative feature for classification between the two ET groups.

CONCLUSION

Our study demonstrated higher cortical involvement in fronto-temporal areas in rET than in ET patients, which may be linked to the cognitive status. A machine learning approach based on MR volumetric data demonstrated that these two ET subtypes can be distinguished using structural cortical features.