Yu Zhang1,2, Norbert Schuff1,2,
Susan C. Woolley3, Gloria Chiang1,2, Lauren Boreta1,2,
Jonathan S. Katz3, Michael W. Weiner1,2
1CIND VA Medical Center, San Francisco,
CA, United States; 2UC San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United
States; 3Forbes Norris ALS Center, California Pacific Medical
Center, San Francisco, CA, United States
We
report longitudinal differences of white matter degradation in 16 amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients who were scanned at 7-month intervals, by
using a preliminary longitudinal assessment of diffusion tensor MRI (DTI).
Both tractography-guided ROI analysis and voxel-wise whole brain analysis
showed a significant decline of fractional anisotropy (FA) over time in the
right corticospinal tract (CST). Furthermore, the FA decline was significant
in the localized (mild) subgroup of ALS but not the generalized (severe)
subgroup. These preliminary results suggest that longitudinal DTI
measurements capture clinical progression of ALS.