Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

Michael Zeineh¹
¹Stanford University, CA

Synopsis

Keywords: Neuro: Nervous System, Neuro: Neurodegeneration, Neuro: Brain

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is a very common condition with millions occurring annually in the US and worldwide. The majority of mTBI cases have a lack of complete recover 6 months after injury. At the same time, the majority of mTBI have normal conventional imaging. The need for imaging is to detect the abnormalities that underly the long-term cognitive changes, and to detect them at an early stage. This discussion will review multi-modal imaging in mild TBI.

Mild traumatic brain injury afflicts millions. Suspected forms of brain injury include contusion, hemorrhage, and axonal injury. Most mTBIs do not have evidence of these abnormalities. Yet, measurable deficits persist in the majority of patients followed. One potential population worthy of investigation is sports: sports themselves can cause brain injury of concern to the public, and there is the opportunity to image pre- and post-injury. DTI is a method that should yield promise in measuring injury. Many acquisition and image processing components of DTI are considered in order to isolate white matter structures and quantify microstructure. Another commonly employed modality in mTBI is volumetry, which is the quantification of volume/thickness of various brain structures. Other aspects of pathology considered is the vasculature, in particular cerebral blood flow, which can be measured noninvasively with arterial spin labeling, and network connectivity, which can be analyzed using resting state fMRI.

Acknowledgements

No acknowledgement found.

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Proc. Intl. Soc. Mag. Reson. Med. 32 (2024)