Abnormal Diffusivity Changes in White Matter Regions of the Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Comparison of TBSS, TSPOON, & SPM Analysis

Jeong-Won Jeong¹, Ajay Kumar¹, Senthil K. Sundaram¹, Harry T. Chigani¹, Diane C. Chugani²

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are well known pediatric developmental disorders that are typically characterized by impaired language, reciprocal social interaction, repetitive and stereotypical behaviors. Many diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies point to both microscopic and macroscopic white matter (WM) abnormalities in children with ASD. Although these studies have showed significant changes in diffusivity of WM pathways in ASD, the localization of affected WM region seems to highly depend on several factors such as how diffusivity maps are spatially registered and how resulting maps are analyzed across subjects (voxel-based vs. skeleton-based). To abbreviate this problem in investigating the changes of WM integrity that are manifest in children with ASD, this study combined three complimentary analyses including tract-based spatial statistical analysis (TBSS, skeleton based), tissue specific smoothing compensation analysis (TSPOON, voxel based), and conventional statistical parametric mapping analysis (SPM, voxel based) .