Comparative Analysis of Neuronal Tracts DTI Metrics and Physical Disability in Multiple Sclerosis

Milos Ivkovic¹, Susan A. Gauthier¹

It has been noticed that DTI metrics on certain white matter tracts, such as optic radiation, correlate better with MS physical disability scores than other WM tracts, in particular corticospinal tract. We compared correlation between EDSS and DTI metrics obtained by two different methods: (1) Region-of-Interest based method and (2) recently developed tractography method where neuronal tracts are reconstructed directly on patient data. Further, we investigated age related differences in EDSS and DTI metrics and used 3 longitudinal EDSS scores on the same cohort of patients, which lead us to propose that observed differences in correlation with physical disability occur because changes in certain tracts are due to primary MS pathology, while observed differences in other tracts are mostly due to atrophic degeneration.