Ofer Pasternak1,
Sylvain Bouix1, Yogesh Rathi1, Craig A. Branch2,
Carl-Fredrik Westin1, Martha E. Shenton1, 3,
Michael L. Lipton4
1Harvard
Medical School, Boston, MA, United States; 2The Gruss Magnetic
Resonance Research Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY,
United States; 3VA Boston Healthcare System, Brockton, MA, United
States; 4 The Gruss Magnetic Resonance Research Center, Albert
Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, United States
Detection of brain abnormalities following mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is hard since tissue changes are subtle and heterogeneously located, thus not well suited to be detected using group analyses. We study a diagnosis approach in which free-water corrected diffusion MRIs of acute mTBI subjects are individually compared to a normative atlas. By analyzing the distribution of z-scores we are able to demonstrate significant group differences, which were not detected using conventional group analyses. We locate ranges in the distribution that are most specific to the injury, and these infer the types of abnormalities that can be expected in mTBI,