Quantitative evaluation of white matter hyperintensities in patients with heart failure using an innovative magnetic resonance image analysis method: Association with disrupted circadian blood pressure variation

White matter hyperintensities (WMHs) are risk factors for future cognitive impairment and are associated with an abnormal circadian blood pressure (BP) rhythm in patients with hypertension. However, whether this association exists in patients with heart failure (HF) is unclear. We performed a cross-sectional study of hospitalized patients with HF who underwent ambulatory BP monitoring and brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). A non-dipper BP pattern was defined as a < 10% nocturnal BP decline. WMHs on brain MRI scans were quantitated using a novel image analysis software (FUSION: FUsed Software for Imaging Of Nervous system). We enrolled 28 hospitalized patients with HF (age: 70.0 ± 9.8 years, 64.3% men). In the brain MRI analysis, the non-dipper group had higher WMH volume (18.9 ± 19.8 vs. 7.7 ± 8.3 mL, P =.047) and percentage of WMH/total brain volume (1.31 ± 1.28% vs. 0.55 ± 0.58%, P =.04) than the dipper group. In conclusion, using the newly developed MRI analysis software, we successfully quantitatively measured the volume of WMHs and found that the WMH volume increased 2.4 times in patients with a non-dipper pattern of nocturnal BP compared with those with a normal dipper pattern.