Fractal dimension brain morphometry: a novel approach to quantify white matter in traumatic brain injury
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Fractal dimension brain morphometry: a novel approach to quantify white matter in traumatic brain injury Venkateswaran Rajagopalan 1,2 & Abhijit Das 2,3 & Luduan Zhang 4 & Frank Hillary 5 & Glenn R. Wylie 2,3 & Guang H. Yue 2,6
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the main cause of disability in people younger than 35 in the United States. The mechanisms of TBI are complex resulting in both focal and diffuse brain damage. Fractal dimension (FD) is a measure that can characterize morphometric complexity and variability of brain structure especially white matter (WM) structure and may provide novel insights into the injuries evident following TBI. FD-based brain morphometry may provide information on WM structural changes after TBI that is more sensitive to subtle structural changes post injury compared to conventional MRI measurements. Anatomical and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data were obtained using a 3 T MRI scanner in subjects with moderate to severe TBI and in healthy controls (HC). Whole brain WM volume, grey matter volume, cortical thickness, cortical area, FD and DTI metrics were evaluated globally and for the left and right hemispheres separately. A neuropsychological test battery sensitive to cognitive impairment associated with traumatic brain injury was performed. TBI group showed lower structural complexity (FD) bilaterally (p < 0.05). No significant difference in either grey matter volume, cortical thickness or cortical area was observed in any of the brain regions between TBI and healthy controls. No significant differences in whole brain WM volume or DTI metrics between TBI and HC groups were observed. Behavioral data analysis revealed that WM FD accounted for a significant amount of variance in executive functioning and processing speed beyond demographic and DTI variables. FD therefore, may serve as a sensitive marker of injury and may play a role in outcome prediction in TBI. Keywords Fractal dimension . DTI . TBI . Cognitive domain scores
Abbreviations BET Brain Extraction Tool DTI Diffusion Tensor Imaging FAST FMRIB’s Automated Segmentation Tool FD Fractal Dimension FLIRT FMRIB’s Linear Image Registration Tool
FMRIB FNIRT FSL FWER FWHM
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Brain FMRIB’s Nonlinear Image Registration Tool Functional MRI of the brain Software Libraries Family-Wise Error Rate Full-Width Half-Maximum
Venkateswaran Rajagopalan and Abhijit Das equally contributed to this work as co-first authors. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-018-9892-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Guang H. Yue [email protected] 1
2
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, Hyderabad, India Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Rutgers, the State University of N
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