WHITE MATTER INTEGRITY IN TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY: EFFECTS OF PERMISSIBLE FIBER TURNING ANGLE

Emily L Dennis; Yan Jin; Claudia Kernan; Talin Babikian; Richard Mink; Christopher Babbitt; Jeffrey Johnson; Christopher C Giza; Robert F Asarnow; Paul M Thompson

doi:10.1109/ISBI.2015.7164023

WHITE MATTER INTEGRITY IN TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY: EFFECTS OF PERMISSIBLE FIBER TURNING ANGLE

Proc IEEE Int Symp Biomed Imaging. 2015 Apr:2015:930-933. doi: 10.1109/ISBI.2015.7164023.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Imaging Genetics Center, USC Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
² Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
³ Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Los Angeles BioMedical Research Institute, Department of Pediatrics, Torrance, CA, USA.
⁴ Miller Children's Hospital, Long Beach, CA, USA.
⁵ LAC+USC Medical Center, Department of Pediatrics, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁶ UCLA Brain Injury Research Center, Dept of Neurosurgery and Division of Pediatric Neurology, Mattel Children's Hospital, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁷ Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA ; Department of Psychology, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁸ Imaging Genetics Center, USC Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, USA ; Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA ; Departments of Neurology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Radiology, Engineering, and Ophthalmology, USC.

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of death and disability in children. Diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) methods have been shown to be especially sensitive to white matter abnormalities in TBI. We used our newly developed autoMATE algorithm (automated multi-atlas tract extraction) to map altered WM integrity in TBI. Even so, tractography methods include a free parameter that limits the maximum permissible turning angles for extracted fibers, with little investigation of how this may affect statistical group comparisons. Here, we examined WM integrity calculated over a range of fiber turning angles to determine to what extent this parameter affects our ability to detect group differences. Fiber turning angle threshold has a subtle, but sometimes significant, effect on the differences we were able to detect between TBI and healthy children.

Keywords: High angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI); fiber turning angle; tractography; traumatic brain injury.

Abstract

Grants and funding