MRI-DTI Tractography to Quantify Brain Connectivity in Traumatic Brain Injury

Abstract

Accurate diagnosis of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and prediction of outcome following treatment is a key factor in head-trauma management. One of the serious consequences of TBI is diffuse axonal injury (DAI). Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) based Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) is an ideal modality to detect DAI as DTI can detect and quantify small alterations in local diffusion patterns due to axonal injury. Preliminary analysis of DTI data acquired from TBI patients and 10 normal control subjects suggests that (1) it is possible to detect, localize and quantify injured regions with high statistical significance by comparing the voxellated diffusion anisotropy maps of individual TBI patients to those of the control group after all data have been normalized, and (2) it is possible to identify brain pathways disrupted by injury and to quantify disruptions in individual subjects by DTI tractography. This quantification provides a metric to monitor the longitudinal progression of TBI in response to treatment.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 01, 2009
Accession Number
ADA501253

Entities

People

  • Chi-shing Zee
  • Edward R. Grant
  • Jeongwon Jeong
  • Manbir Singh
  • Peter Gruen

Organizations

  • University of Southern California

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Anisotropy
  • Brain
  • Brain Injuries
  • Detection
  • Diagnostic Imaging
  • Diffusion
  • Health Services
  • Magnetic Resonance
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging
  • Medical Personnel
  • Neuroimaging
  • Resonance

Readers

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