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Abstract #4474

White Matter Integrity Analyzed by Tract-Based Spatial Statistics in Elderly Subjects Without White Matter Lesions

Daniel Han-en Chang1, L Tugan Muftuler1, Huali Wang2,3, Orhan Nalcioglu1, Min-Ying Lydia Su1

1Tu & Yuen Center for Functional Onco-Imaging, University of California, Irvine, CA, United States; 2Dementia Care Research Center, Peking University Institute of Mental Health, Beijing, China; 3Key Laboratory for Mental Health, Ministry of Health, Beijing, China


Subjects with Alzheimers and mild cognitive impairment have decreased white matter integrity in comparison to healthy controls, which can quantified as fractional anisotropic (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) values by DTI methods. Tract-based-spatial-statistics (TBSS) is a frequently used robust method for comparing FA maps between different subject groups; however, most published studies analyzed subjects without excluding subjects with white matter lesions, which may have an effect on FA and MD values. In order to examine this possible effect, we excluded subjects with white matter lesions from our study cohort and performed TBSS. Our results were consistent with what literature reports.

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