Chronic disorders of consciousness (DOC) are severe neurological disorders due to lesions massively affecting the brain. The treatment and prognosis in the case of DOC is an actual problem demanding novel imaging approaches, in particular, allowing one to determine the extend of brain structural changes. Diffusion-weighted MRI is a powerful candidate for in vivo probing and visualization of brain damage severity in DOC patients. In order to investigate white matter microstructural changes associated with the chronic DOC we performed tract-based spatial statistics analysis and complementary brainstem diffusion metric comparisons between patients and healthy control groups. Our findings revealed large white matter changes in the DOC patients, in particular, using novel and sensitive biomarkers based on the kurtosis scalar metrics. We hope that our discoveries help us to improve a forthcoming treatment of DOC patients.
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