Yvonne W Lui1, Yongxian Qian1, Karthik Lakshmanan1, Jacqueline Smith1, Graham Wiggins1, Steven Flanagan2, and Fernando E Boada1
1Radiology, New York University, New York, NY, United States, 2Rehabilitation Medicine, New York University, New York, NY, United States
Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is a growing public
health problem with more than 1.5 million cases a year in the United States. The
pathophysiological processes underlying mTBI are complex, including
biomechanical injury induced stretching of the axons and depolarization of the normal
resting voltage across the cell membrane. Sodium handling by the brain is
critical to restore ionic homeostasis after injury and disordered handling is
implicated in the long-term pathophysiology of concussion. With
state-of-the-art sodium (23Na) MR imaging, one can obtain high quality sodium
images in a clinical setting at 3T. Here we seek to observe patterns of total sodium
distribution in brain in individuals with mTBI.
