Wang Zhan1, Grant Gauger1,2, Gary Abrams3, Tatjana Novakovic-Agopian3, Michele Meeker1, Lauren Boreta1, Tess Kornfield1, Yu Zhang1, Marzieh Nezamzadeh1, Norbert Schuff1, Michael Weiner1
1University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA; 2VA Medical Center, San Francisco, CA, USA; 3VA Medical Center , San Francisco, CA, USA
Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is applied to detect white matter (WM) alterations following mild traumatic brain injury (TBI). Both acute and chronic mild TBI groups are compared to each other, and to age and sex-matched normal controls. Our data suggest that postinjury axonal degradation, measured by fractional anisotropy (FA), occurs in varying WM regions in different postinjury phases. In these regions, decreased FA is also correlated with longer postinjury time in the acute TBI group. WM alterations tend to appear in regions of the cingulate and corpus callosum in acute TBI, and extend to other areas in chronic TBI stages.