Abstract #3661

Robust Detection of Progressive White Matter Abnormalities in MTBI Using DW-MRI

Il Yong Chun¹, Allan Diaz¹, Yun-Jang Jin¹, Xiaodong Li¹, Larry Leverenz², Eric Nauman³, Thomas Talavage¹,⁴

¹School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States; ²3Department of Health and Kinesiology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States; ³School of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States; ⁴Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States

Building on our study of repetitive blows in contact sports, we introduce a bootstrapped z-score analysis as a robust voxel-wise statistical analysis method to detect deviations from normal white matter fractional anisotropy. With this approach, we evaluate the progression of changes in fractional anisotropy (FA) over time, using DW-MRI scans from pre-season to post-season. These changes provide strong evidence that contact sports athletes, especially American football players, who receive many blows to the head during the season, exhibit likely chronic white matter injuries.