Cheng-Liang Liu1, I-Chao Liu2,
Wen-Yang Chiang3, Fang-Cheng Yeh4, Li-Wei Kuo1,
Wen-Yih Isaac Tseng1,5
1Center for Optoelectronic Biomedicine,
National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan; 2School
of Medicine, Fu Jen Catholic University, Taipei, Taiwan; 3The
Methodist Hospital Research Institute, Weill Medical College of Cornell
University, Houston, TX, United States; 4Department of Biomedical
Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, United States; 5Department
of Medical Imaging, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan
In
this study, we investigated the relationship between the effect of alcoholic
use and the microstructural alteration of seven association fiber tracts
using diffusion spectrum imaging tractography and tract-specific analysis.
The metric of generalized fractional anisotropy (GFA) was used to identify
the difference between control and alcoholic groups. Among all the
association fiber tracts, a significant GFA deficit was found in bilateral
superior longitudinal fasciculus for chronic alcoholics. A future study to
analyze the segmented parts of the tract is needed to further reveal the
subtle change of microstructural alteration of association fiber tracts in
alcoholism.