Daniel Han-en Chang1, Huali Wang2, 3, Min-Ying Su1
1Tu & Yuen Center for Functional Onco-Imaging, Department of Radiological Sciences, University of California, Irvine, CA, United States; 2Dementia Care and Research Center, Peking University Institute of Mental Health, Beijing, China; 3Key Laboratory for Mental Health, Ministry of Health (Peking University), Beijing, China
White matter lesions represent microvascular ischemic changes that are often indicative of tissue dysfunction. As DTI is sensitive to microstructural changes, it is possible that the presence of WML may have an effect on FA and MD values. Using tract-based-spatial-statistics, a robust method for comparing diffusivity maps between different groups of subjects, we compared the FA values in a pair-wise fashion among four groups of subjects: Alzheimers (AD) subjects with WML, AD subjects without WML, normal control (NC) subjects with WML, and NC subjects without WML. In our analyses, only AD subjects without WML were found to have significantly decreased FA when compared to NC subjects with WML and NC subjects without WML.