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Abstract #4346

A Diffusion Tensor Imaging Study of Longitudinal White Matter Degeneration in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Yu Zhang1,2, Norbert Schuff1,2, Susan C. Woolley3, Gloria Chiang1,2, Lauren Boreta1,2, Jonathan S. Katz3, Michael W. Weiner1,2

1CIND VA Medical Center, San Francisco, CA, United States; 2UC San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States; 3Forbes Norris ALS Center, California Pacific Medical Center, San Francisco, CA, United States


We report longitudinal differences of white matter degradation in 16 amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients who were scanned at 7-month intervals, by using a preliminary longitudinal assessment of diffusion tensor MRI (DTI). Both tractography-guided ROI analysis and voxel-wise whole brain analysis showed a significant decline of fractional anisotropy (FA) over time in the right corticospinal tract (CST). Furthermore, the FA decline was significant in the localized (mild) subgroup of ALS but not the generalized (severe) subgroup. These preliminary results suggest that longitudinal DTI measurements capture clinical progression of ALS.