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Abstract #2124

Diffusion Tensor Imaging Detects Abnormalities in the Corticospinal Tract of the Brain in Patients with Adrenomyeloneuropathy

Aliya Gifford1, Anna Binstock2, Joseph Wang3, Kathy Zackowski3,4, Jonathan Farrell5,6, Peter C.M. van Zijl5,6, Gerald Raymond1,4, Seth Smith7,8

1Department of Neurogenetics, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD, United States; 2University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD; 3Motion Analysis Laboratory, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD; 4Department of Neurology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD; 5Department of Radiology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD; 6F.M. Kirby Research Center for Functional Brain Imaging, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD; 7Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science, United States; 8Department of Radiology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN


Adrenomyeloneuropathy (AMN) is characterized by primary distal axonopathy with secondary demyelination. In this study we performed diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) at 1.5T on 29 healthy volunteers and 39 AMN patients. Tractography of the left and right corticospinal tracts (CST) were performed and diffusion anisotropy and diffusivity were computed. A significant change in FA and perpendicular diffusivity was found from the pons to mid-brain (p<0.01) and mid-brain to thalamus (p<0.001) regions in AMN patients. This suggests that DTI can quantify the pathway-specific abnormalities in AMN, and results are in corroboration with knowledge that cerebral damage is present in AMN.