Difusion Tension Imaging More Likely to Reveal Brain Damage than Other Forms of Imaging

The researchers who were led by Dr. Michael Lipton stated:

“DTI has been studied extensively as a tool for identification of brain abnormalities related to TBI and understand the relationship of these brain abnormalities to other clinical features of the disorder. During the past decade, the number of such studies has risen exponentially and continues to increase with no sign of abatement. A unifying theme can be deduced from this large body of research:

DTI is an extremely useful and robust tool for the detection of TBI-related brain abnormalities. Overwhelming consensus of these studies is that low white matter FA is characteristic of TBI.

We also found an overwhelming consensus that imaging abnormalities detected with DTI are associated with important clinical outcomes. This further validates DTI as a meaningful measure of clinically important brain injury.

In summary, DTI provides a robust measure of clinically important TAI at cross-section, despite the variability inherent in characteristics of patients with TBI and injury mechanisms as well as study differences in data acquisition and analysis methods.”