Abstract #3479

White matter lesions highly influence group comparison of diffusion tensor imaging metrics

Daniel Svärd^1,2, Markus Nilsson³, Björn Lampinen⁴, Jimmy Lätt², Pia Sundgren^1,2, Erik Stomrud⁵, Lennart Minthon⁵, Katarina Nägga⁵, Oskar Hansson^5,6, and Danielle van Westen^1,2

¹Diagnostic Radiology, Clinical Sciences, Lund University, Lund, Sweden, ²Center for Medical Imaging and Physiology, Skåne University Hospital, Lund, Sweden, ³Lund University Bioimaging Center, Lund University, Lund, Sweden, ⁴Department of Medical Radiation Physics, Lund University, Lund, Sweden, ⁵Clinical Memory Research Unit, Clinical Sciences, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden, ⁶Neurology, Clinical Sciences, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

White matter lesions (WML) are common in cognitively healthy elderly and their presence in a brain region is associated with elevated mean diffusivity (MD) and reduced fractional anisotropy (FA). We compared patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) to control groups with different prevalence of WML. Our results showed that including subjects with WML in the control group highly influence the outcome of statistical analysis of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) metrics. We conclude that WML should be taken into consideration when designing and interpreting DTI studies.

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