Abstract #0860

Mapping axonal injury distribution in mild traumatic brain injury with quantitative proton MR spectroscopy

Ivan Kirov^1,2, Matthew S. Davitz^1,2, Assaf Tal³, James S. Babb^1,2, Robert I Grossman^1,2, Yvonne W Lui^1,4, and Oded Gonen^1,2

¹Center for Advanced Imaging Innovation and Research (CAI2R), New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, United States, ²Bernard and Irene Schwartz Center for Biomedical Imaging, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, United States, ³Chemical Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, ⁴Bernard and Irene Schwartz Center for Biomedical Imaging, New York, NY, United States

Since axonal injury is a primary outcome of traumatic brain injury, our goal was to characterize its regional distribution from a metabolic perspective. We set out to identify regions prone to disproportionate injury, hence, candidate targets in potential clinical applications of proton MR spectroscopy (¹H-MRS). We found that metabolic axonal injury is diffusely distributed among commonly injured tracts, but multivoxel ¹H-MRS may lack sensitivity for its detection on a regional basis. These results motivate the use of ¹H-MRS approaches with higher sensitivity, such as global averaging, or large "single voxels" in areas of white matter, irrespective of placement location.

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