Abstract #1167

Mapping White Matter Degradation Following Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: A Diffusion Tensor Imaging Study

Wang Zhan¹, Grant Gauger^1,2, Gary Abrams³, Tatjana Novakovic-Agopian³, Michele Meeker¹, Lauren Boreta¹, Tess Kornfield¹, Yu Zhang¹, Marzieh Nezamzadeh¹, Norbert Schuff¹, Michael Weiner¹

¹University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA; ²VA Medical Center, San Francisco, CA, USA; ³VA Medical Center , San Francisco, CA, USA

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is applied to detect white matter (WM) alterations following mild traumatic brain injury (TBI). Both acute and chronic mild TBI groups are compared to each other, and to age and sex-matched normal controls. Our data suggest that postinjury axonal degradation, measured by fractional anisotropy (FA), occurs in varying WM regions in different postinjury phases. In these regions, decreased FA is also correlated with longer postinjury time in the acute TBI group. WM alterations tend to appear in regions of the cingulate and corpus callosum in acute TBI, and extend to other areas in chronic TBI stages.