Olga Tymofiyeva1, Christopher P. Hess1, Etay Ziv1, Sonia L. Bonifacio2, Patrick S. McQuillen2, Donna M. Ferriero2, A James Barkovich1, Duan Xu1
1Department of Radiology & Biomedical Imaging, UCSF, San Francisco, CA, United States; 2Department of Pediatrics, UCSF, San Francisco, CA, United States
Babies with neonatal encephalopathy are facing the risk of neurological deficits that are difficult to predict. The recently introduced technique for characterizing structural connectivity networks using diffusion MRI can become a new tool for studying the subtle differences in anatomical connectivity of the baby brain. In this study, we correlated some basic properties of the structural brain networks in babies with encephalopathy with the neuromotor outcome at the age of six months. A trend to declining brain network integration and segregation could be observed with increasing neuromotor deficits.
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