Voxel-Wise Analysis of Diffusion Tensor Imaging for Clinical Outcome of Cochlear Implantation: Retrospective Study

ObjectivesTo evaluate retrospectively, the possible difference in diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) metric of fractional anisotropy (FA) between good and poor surgical outcome cochlear implantation (CI) patients using investigator-independent voxel-wise analysis.MethodsEighteen patients (11 males, 7 females; mean age, 5.9 years) with profound sensorineural hearing loss underwent DTI scans using a 3.0 Tesla magnetic resonance scanner. Among the 18 patients, 10 patients with categories of auditory performance (CAP) score over 6 were classified into the good outcome group and 8 patients with CAP score below 6 were classified into the poor outcome group. The diffusion tensor scalar measure was calculated from the eigenvalues of the tensor on a voxel-by-voxel basis from each subject and two-sample t-test evaluation between good and poor outcome subjects were performed for each voxel of FA values, across the entire brain, with a voxel-wise intensity threshold of P