Abstract #0789

Improve Diagnosis of Sport-Related Sub-Concussive Injury of Individual Football Athletes: Changes in DTI and Mechanical Impact Metrics from Real-Time Recording

Tong Zhu¹, Eric Blackman², Xing Qiu³, Jeffray Bazarian⁴, Rui Hu³, Eric Rozen⁵, Jianhui Zhong¹

¹Imaging Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, United States; ²Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, United States; ³Biostatistics, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, United States; ⁴Emergency Medicine, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, United States; ⁵Athletics and Recreation, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, United States

The public health impact of brain injury from repetitive sub-concussive head blows during team sport is potentially dramatic, and DTI has been used to study brain injury associated with concussions. In this study, we conducted three longitudinal DTI studies of a group of 10 college football players before and after a regular football season, along with mechanical force data recorded by helmet-embedded sensors throughout the season. Despite a small sample size, the study finds that longitudinal changes in DTI measures and mechanical force show strong significant correlations when comparing pre- and post-season data.