Affiliation:
1. Department of Radiology The First Hospital of Jilin University, Jilin Provincial Key Laboratory of Medical Imaging and Big Data, Radiology and Technology Innovation Center of Jilin Province, Jilin Provincial International Joint Research Center of Medical Artificial Intelligence Changchun Jilin 130021 People's Republic of China
2. Department of Nuclear Medicine The First Hospital of Jilin University Changchun Jilin 130021 People's Republic of China
Abstract
The habenula (Hb) is involved in many natural human behaviors, and the relevance of its alterations in size and neural activity to several psychiatric disorders and addictive behaviors has been presumed and investigated in recent years using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Although the Hb is small, an increasing number of studies have overcome the difficulties in MRI. Conventional structural‐based imaging also has great defects in observing the Hb contrast with adjacent structures. In addition, more and more attention should be paid to the Hb's functional, structural, and quantitative imaging studies. Several advanced MRI methods have recently been employed in clinical studies to explore the Hb and its involvement in psychiatric diseases. This review summarizes the anatomy and function of the human Hb; moreover, it focuses on exploring the human Hb with noninvasive MRI approaches, highlighting strategies to overcome the poor contrast with adjacent structures and the need for multiparametric MRI to develop imaging markers for diagnosis and treatment follow‐up.Level of Evidence3Technical Efficacy Stage2
Funder
National Natural Science Foundation of China
Natural Science Foundation of Jilin Province
Subject
Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and imaging