Vasily L. Yarnykh1, Hunter R. Underhill1,
Donna J. Cross1, K McCraw2, J Biberston2, D
J. Hoff2, K Hart2, Satoshi Minoshima1, Eric
C. Petrie3,4, Murray A. Raskind2, Elaine R. Peskind,
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1Department of Radiology, University of
Washington, Seattle, WA, United States; 2Northwest Network Mental
Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC), Veterans Affairs
Puget Sound Health Care System, Seattle, WA, United States; 3Department
of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle,
WA, United States; 4Northwest Network Mental Illness Research,
Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC) , Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health
Care System, Seattle, WA, United States
Cross-relaxation
imaging (CRI) is a new method for quantitative mapping of parameters
describing magnetization transfer between mobile water protons (free pool)
and macromolecular protons (bound pool) in tissues. The purpose of this study
was to test the capability of CRI to identify post-traumatic changes in brain
tissues caused by blast-induced mTBI. CRI was performed in groups of military
veterans recently exposed to blast trauma and healthy controls. Bound pool
fraction (f) maps were reconstructed using a novel modification of the CRI
processing algorithm. Histogram analysis revealed a significant decrease of f
in both white and gray matter of mTBI patients.