Magnetic resonance imaging of white matter in Alzheimer's disease: a global bibliometric analysis from 1990 to 2022

Front Neurosci. 2023 May 25:17:1163809. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2023.1163809. eCollection 2023.

Abstract

Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a common, progressive, irreversible, and fatal neurodegenerative disorder with rapidly increasing worldwide incidence. Although much research on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the white matter (WM) in AD has been published, no bibliometric analysis study has investigated this issue. Thus, this study aimed to provide an overview of the current status, hotspots, and trends in MRI of WM in AD.

Methods: We searched for records related to MRI studies of WM in AD from 1990 to 2022 in the Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC) database. CiteSpace (version 5.1.R8) and VOSviewer (version 1.6.19) software were used for bibliometric analyses.

Results: A total of 2,199 articles were obtained from this study. From 1990 to 2022, the number of published articles showed exponential growth of y = 4.1374e0.1294x, with an average of 17.9 articles per year. The top country and institutions were the United States and the University of California Davis, accounting for 44.52 and 5.32% of the total studies, respectively. The most productive journal was Neurology, and the most co-cited journal was Lancet Neurology. Decarli C was the most productive author. The current research frontier trend focuses on the association between small vessel disease and AD, the clinical application and exploration of diffusion MRI, and related markers.

Conclusion: This study provides an in-depth overview of publications on MRI of WM in AD, identifying the current research status, hotspots, and frontier trends in the field.

Keywords: Alzheimer's disease; CiteSpace; VOSviewer; bibliometric analysis; magnetic resonance imaging; white matter.

Publication types

  • Review

Grants and funding

This study was partly supported by the National Foundation of Natural Science of China (82074537, 81373714, and 82174477); Joint Guidance Project of Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province (LH2020H103 and LH2021H101); District-level Research Projects of Longhua District Healthcare Institutions in 2022 (2022010); Harbin Science and Technology Bureau Science and Technology Innovation Talent Project (2017RAQXJ180); and Chinese Medicine Administration of Heilongjiang (ZHY2022-194). The funder had no role in this study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.