title: Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging in hepatic encephalopathy: current status and perspectives.
abstract: Hepatic encephalopathy (HE) is a neuropsychiatric syndrome which develops in patients with severe liver diseases and/or portal-systemic shunting. Minimal HE, the earliest manifestation of HE, has drawn increasing attention in the last decade. Minimal HE is associated with a series of brain functional changes, such as attention, working memory, and so on. Blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) functional MRI (fMRI), especially resting-state fMRI has been used to explore the brain functional changes of HE, yielding important insights for understanding pathophysiological mechanisms and functional reorganization of HE. This paper briefly reviews the principles of BOLD fMRI, potential applications of resting-state fMRI with advanced post-processing algorithms such as regional homogeneity, amplitude of low frequency fluctuation, functional connectivity and future research perspective in this field.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Imaging, Jinling Hospital, Medical School of Nanjing University, 305 Zhongshan East Road, Xuanwu District, Nangjing, Jiangsu Province, China, 210002, kevinzhlj@163.com.
authors.forename: Long Jiang
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Shengyong
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Jiaqian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ren
authors.forename: Guang Ming
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Lu
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006501:Hepatic Encephalopathy / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008099:Liver / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging