Clinical utility of diffusion tensor imaging for evaluating patients with diffuse axonal injury and cognitive disorders in the chronic stage.

Abstract Although diffuse axonal injury (DAI) usually ellicits cognitive disorders, abnormal brain findings are generally undetected by conventional imaging techniques. The aim of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to detect lesions in DAI patients and to investigate the correlation between DAI lesions and cognitive disorders. We examined 16 healthy controls and 11 patients with DAI. Using voxel-based analysis, we found that there were significantly more brain regions with decreased fractional anisotropy (FA) in the brain but DAI patients compared to healthy controls (p < 0.001), whereas few lesions were detected via conventional magnetic resonance imaging. There was a significant relationship between the results of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised, Trail Making Test, and some indices of the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised and the decreased FA observed in various areas of the brain (p < 0.001). The total cognitive scores on the functional independ...