Wang Zhan1, Zhen Wang2,3, Charles Marmar2, Thomas Neylan2, Yu Zhang1, Susanne Mueller1, Marzieh Nezamzadeh1, Chris Ching1, Michael Weiner1, Norbert Schuff1
1Department of Radiology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA; 2PTSD Research Program, VA Medical Center, San Francisco, CA, USA; 3Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) technique is applied to analyze the white matter (WM) integrity alterations in war-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in male veterans. Voxel-based group comparisons are made between PTSD veterans and age-matched healthy veterans controls. PTSD related WM degradations, measured by reduced fractional anisotropy (FA), are detected in WM tracts in prefrontal cortex (PFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). In the PTSD group, reduced FA is also found to be significantly correlated with increased PTSD severities, and the decreased volumes of hippocampal subfield CA3 and dentate gyrus (CA3&DG).
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