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Advanced Diffusion Imaging in The Hippocampus of Rats with Mild Traumatic Brain Injury
Published on: August 14, 2019
Corticospinal tract injury in patients with diffuse axonal injury: a diffusion tensor imaging study
Sung Ho Jang1, Seong Ho Kim, Oh Lyong Kim
1Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, College of Medicine, Yeungnam University, Republic of Korea. strokerehab@hanmail.net
Neurorehabilitation
|December 29, 2009
Summary
Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) effectively detects corticospinal tract (CST) injuries in diffuse axonal injury (DAI) patients. This method identified CST damage, particularly in the pons, in patients with unexplained motor weakness.
Area of Science:
- Neuroimaging
- Neurology
- Radiology
Background:
- Diffuse axonal injury (DAI) often causes motor weakness.
- Conventional MRI may not reveal specific lesions along the corticospinal tract (CST) in DAI.
- Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) shows promise in detecting subcortical white matter injuries.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the incidence and distribution of CST injury in DAI patients using DTI.
- To assess DTI's utility in identifying subcortical CST damage.
- To correlate CST injury locations with motor weakness in DAI.
Main Methods:
- Recruited 14 DAI patients with motor weakness and 12 healthy controls.
- Performed DTI using a 1.5 T scanner and SENSE head coil.
- Measured fractional anisotropy (FA) using region of interest, defining injury as FA decreased by two standard deviations below controls.
Main Results:
- All 14 patients exhibited multiple CST injuries (mean 3.6 lesions).
- Most prevalent CST injury locations included the pons (61%), cerebral peduncle (39%), and corona radiata (21%).
- The pons was the most frequent site of CST injury in DAI patients with subcortical weakness.
Conclusions:
- DTI is a valuable tool for detecting subcortical CST injuries in DAI.
- The findings highlight the pons as a common site of CST injury in DAI.
- DTI aids in diagnosing the cause of motor deficits in DAI patients when conventional MRI is inconclusive.
