Quantitative study on whole brain volume in patients with obstructive sleep apnea based on synthetic magnetic resonance imaging.

Objective: To apply SyMRI to quantify whole brain volume changes in patients with varying degrees of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).

Methods: A total of 49 untreated adult patients diagnosed with OSA via polysomnography (PSG) at our hospital were included in this study. Among these patients, 21 were categorized into the mild-to-moderate OSA group, and 28 into the severe OSA group. Additionally, 31 healthy adults were recruited as the healthy control (HC) group. SyMRI post-processing software was used to obtain whole brain volume segmentation values.

Results: In terms of the STOP-BANG questionnaire, the score of the severe OSA group was significantly higher than that of the mild-to-moderate OSA group (P < 0.05). Compared with the HC group, the mild-to-moderate OSA group and the severe OSA group exhibited a reduction in N3-stage sleep (both P < 0.05). Post-hoc multiple comparisons showed that compared with the HC group, the severe OSA group had increased GMV, BPV, and ICV, while the mild-to-moderate OSA group showed an increase in CSFV (P < 0.05). Additionally, compared with the HC group, the mild-to-moderate OSA group exhibited a decrease and the severe OSA group showed an increase in MYV (P < 0.05). Multiple comparisons of normalized volume fractions revealed that GMF, WMF, CSFF, MYF and BPVF were significantly different between the HC group and OSA groups (all P < 0.05).

Conclusion: The brain volume parameters generated from SyMRI can quantify the degree of brain injury in patients with OSA.

Clinical trial number: Not applicable.