Analysis of diffusion tensor images of the brain of patients with moderate and severe traumatic diffuse axonal injury

Abstract

Diffuse axonal injury (DAI) is a pathological substrate responsible for much of the white matter (WM) damage in patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Surviving patients may present functional deficits and great impairment in quality of life. Several non-conventional magnetic resonance (MR) techniques have been used to evaluate DAI, and because it is a lesion that primarily affects SB, we opted to study it evolutionarily through diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). In particular, DTI can provide unique qualitative and quantitative information on SB microstructure and brain connectivity, and is also useful in evolutionary disease monitoring. The quantitative parameters derived from DTI can also be correlated with clinical and neuropsychological data. The main objective is to longitudinally evaluate the integrity of WM with DTI and MRI a group of 30 LAD sun patients due to moderate to severe TBI in the aid (t¹ <3 months), subacute (6