TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2018//
TI  - White matter tract integrity: an indicator of axonal pathology after mild traumatic brain injury
JO  - Journal of neurotrauma
A1  - Chung, Sohae
A1  - Fieremans, Els
A1  - Wang, Xiuyuan
A1  - Kucukboyaci, Nuri E.
A1  - Morton, Charles J.
A1  - Babb, James S.
A1  - Amorapanth, Prin
A1  - Foo, Farng-Yang
A1  - Novikov, Dmitry S.
A1  - Flanagan, Steven R.
A1  - Rath, Joseph F.
A1  - Lui, Yvonne W.
SP  - 1015
EP  - 1020
VL  - 35
IS  - 8
N2  - We seek to elucidate the underlying pathophysiology of injury sustained after mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) using multi-shell diffusion MRI, deriving compartment-specific WM tract integrity (WMTI) metrics. WMTI allows a more biophysical interpretation of WM changes by describing microstructural characteristics in both intra- and extra-axonal environments. Thirty-two patients with MTBI within 30 days of injury and twenty-one age- and sex-matched controls were imaged on a 3T MR scanner. Multi-shell diffusion acquisition was performed with 5 b-values (250 - 2500 s/mm<sup>2</sup>) along 6 - 60 diffusion encoding directions. Tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) was used with family-wise error (FWE) correction for multiple comparisons. TBSS results demonstrate focally lower intra-axonal diffusivity (D<sub>axon</sub>) in MTBI patients in the splenium of the corpus callosum (sCC) (p < 0.05, FWE-corrected). The Area Under the Curve (AUC)-value for was 0.76 with low sensitivity of 46.9%, but 100% specificity. These results indicate that D<sub>axon</sub> may be a useful imaging biomarker highly specific for MTBI-related WM injury. The observed decrease in D<sub>axon</sub> suggests restriction of the diffusion along the axons occurring shortly after injury.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0897-7151
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/neu.2017.5320
ID  - ref1
ER  -