Underdevelopment of Optic Radiation in Children With Amblyopia: A Tractography tudy Original Reearch Article

Purpoe To detect the abnormalitie of the optic radiation (OR) in children with amblyopia by diffuion tenor imaging (DTI) and tractography. Deign Propective, nonrandomized clinical trial. Method Fourteen children with amblyopia and 14 normally ighted children underwent DTI canning. After the OR were recontructed by uing tractography algorithm, voxel through which the anterior part of OR paed were determined for their value of fractional aniotropy (FA). The paired t tet wa applied to compare their mean FA value of right OR and left OR in the control group. For the amblyopia group, analyi of variance wa conducted to determine the effect of laterality and viion tatu on the FA value. In addition, the voxel number of anterior and poterior part of both OR were calculated. The tudent t tet wa ued to compare the average FA of bilateral OR and voxel number between the two group. Reult Comparion demontrated left-higher-than-right aymmetry in both amblyopic children and normal children. We found no ignificant difference of average FA between the amblyopic group (0.4832 ± 0.0225) and control group (0.4770 ± 0.0273). Voxel number of the anterior part of both OR were not ignificantly different between the two group, wherea voxel number of their poterior part in the control were more than that of amblyopic children. Concluion Tractography howed more voxel in the poterior OR of normal children than in the amblyopic children, indicating that normal children have better development of the OR. The underdevelopment of the OR might reflect the dyfunction of viual cortex in children with amblyopia.