Anthony J. Romano1,
Jing Guo2, Torben Prokscha3, Sebastian Hirsch4,
Juergen Braun5, Ingolf Sack3, Michael Scheel3
1Physical
Acoustics, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, United States; 2Department
of Radiology, Charite - University Medicine Berlin, Berlin, Germany; 3Department
of Radiology, Charite-Universitatsmedizin, Berlin, Germany; 4Department
of Radiology, Charit - Universittsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany; 5Institute
of Medical Informatics, Charite -
University Medicine Berlin, Berlin, Germany
We implemented a method called Waveguide Elastography in the analysis of orthotropic elastic parameters of the corticospinal tracts (CSTs) in the brains of five healthy volunteers. Here, we extend this method in an attempt to detect Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) by analyzing the stiffness of the CSTs of 10 subjects: These included five healthy controls and five patients who present with ALS. We found that we were able to detect a 5% reduction in shear stiffness in the patients vs the controls, and using a Mann-Whitney-U test, we obtained a p = 0.008 demonstrating significant differences between the two groups.