부산대학교 도서관

Abstract Background Sphenopalatine ganglion (SPG) is a peripheral structure that plays an important role in cluster headache (CH). Hence, a reliable method to measure the volume of SPG is crucial for studying the peripheral mechanism of CH. Additionally, the association between the clinical profiles and the morphology of the SPG in CH remains undetermined. This study aims to use the manual measurement of SPG volume to investigate its associations with CH, including headache laterality, cranial autonomic symptoms (CASs), presence of restlessness or agitation, and other clinical profiles. Methods We prospectively recruited consecutive CH patients at a tertiary medical center between April 2020 and April 2022. A total of eighty side-locked, in-bout, episodic CH patients and 40 non-headache healthy controls received 1.5 T brain MRI focusing on structural neuroimaging of the SPG. The manual measurement process for SPG was under axial and sagittal FIESTA imaging, with reference T2 weight images (sagittal and axial) for localization. The inter-observer agreement of the SPG volume (both sides of the SPG from CH patients and controls) between the two observers was calculated. In CH patients, clinical profiles and the number of CASs (range 0–5) were recorded to analyze their association with SPG volume. Results The inter-observer agreement between the two raters was excellent for the new SPG volumetry method at 0.88 (95% CI: 0.84–0.90, p