Altered Cerebellar White Matter Integrity in Patients with Mild Traumatic Brain Injury in the Acute Stage.

Abstract

Background and purposeImaging studies of traumatic brain injury demonstrate that the cerebellum is often affected. We aim to examine fractional anisotropy alteration in acute-phase mild traumatic brain injury patients in cerebellum-related white matter tracts.Materials and methodsThis prospective study included 47 mild traumatic brain injury patients in the acute stage and 37 controls. MR imaging and neurocognitive tests were performed in patients within 7 days of injury. White matter integrity was examined by using diffusion tensor imaging. We used three approaches, tract-based spatial statistics, graphical-model-based multivariate analysis, and region-of-interest analysis, to detect altered cerebellar white matter integrity in mild traumatic brain injury patients.ResultsResults from three analysis methods were in accordance with each other, and suggested fractional anisotropy in the middle cerebellar peduncle and the pontine crossing tract was changed in the acute-phase mild traumatic brain injury patients, relative to controls (adjusted p-value ConclusionAltered cerebellar fractional anisotropy in acute-phase mild traumatic brain injury patients is localized in specific regions and statistically associated with cognitive deficits detectable on neurocognitive testing.