Xin Fan1, Kristin Martin-Cook2, Myron F. Weiner3, Hao Huang1,4
1Advanced Imaging Research Center, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA; 2Departmetn of Neurology, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA; 3Department of Psychiatry, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA; 4Department of Radiology, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA
Alzheimer disease is a progressive brain disease of older adults. Fractional anisotropy and apparent diffusion coefficient derived from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) can be used to detect subtle structural white matter abnormalities in persons with Alzheimer disease (AD). We hypothesized that many cerebral white matter tracts would be affected in AD patients with disease progression. In this study, we employed a new automated protocol to quantify structural change in all the major white matter tracts with voxel-based morphometry coupled with a digital white matter atlas and were able to confirm our hypothesis.