Anderson Mon1, Stefan Gazdzinski2, Timothy C. Durazzo1, Ping Hong Yeh2, Dieter J. Meyerhoff1,2
1Radiology, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA; 2Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Diseases, San Francisco, CA, USA
Alcoholism is associated with widespread brain tissue loss (evident in volumetric imaging) and metabolite alterations (evident in spectroscopy) that are exacerbated by cigarette smoking. These changes in brain integrity due to alcohol are also manifested in Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) as lower fractional anisotropy (FA) and elevated mean diffusivity (MD) likely associated with increased extra-cellular spaces. Although MR studies demonstrated WM volume increases and metabolite recovery with sobriety, WM recovery in alcoholics has not been evaluated with DTI, nor have multimodal studies of these three modalities been conducted simultaneously.