Prospective study finds no microstructural damage in acute mild traumatic brain injury using MAP-MRINew MRI technique shows little structural change in mild brain injury patients compared to healthy controls

BACKGROUNDMild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is a signature injury in civilian and military populations that remains invisible to detection by conventional radiological methods. Diffusion MRI has been identified as a potential clinical tool for revealing subtle microstructural alterations associated with mTBI. OBJECTIVEThis study evaluates whether a comprehensive and powerful diffusion MRI (dMRI) technique called mean apparent propagator (MAP) MRI can detect sequelae of mTBI. METHODSWe analyzed data from 417 participants of the GE/NFL prospective mTBI study which included 143 matched controls (mean age, 21.9 {+/-} 8.3 years; 76 women) and 274 patients with acute mTBI and GCS [≥]13 (mean age, 21.9 {+/-} 8.5 years; 131 women). All participants underwent MRI exams at up to four visits including structural high-resolution T1W, T2W, FLAIR-T2W, and dMRI, in addition to clinical assessments of post-concussive physical symptoms (RPQ-3), psychosocial functioning and lifestyle symptoms (RPQ-13), and postural stability (BESS). The dMRI data for each subject were co-registered across all visits and analyzed using the MAP-MRI framework to measure and map the distribution of net microscopic displacements of diffusing water molecules in tissue and ultimately compute the microstructural MAP-MRI tissue parameters including propagator anisotropy (PA), Non-Gaussianity (NG), return-to-origin probability (RTOP), return-to-axis probability (RTAP), and return-to-plane probability (RTPP). We quantified voxel-wise and region-of-interest (ROI)-based changes in these parameters across all four visits. RESULTSMAP-MRI parameter values were within the expected ranges and showed relatively little variation across visits. We found no significant differences in the longitudinal trajectories of these parameters between mTBI patients and controls. At acute post-injury timepoints, RPQ-3 and RPQ-13 scores were increased in mTBI patients relative to controls, while BESS scores were not significantly different between groups. Analysis of dMRI metrics and clinical mTBI markers showed significant correspondence between MAP-MRI metrics in cortical gray matter, caudate and pallidum and BESS scores. CONCLUSIONWe developed and tested a state-of-the-art quantitative image processing pipeline for sensitive analysis and detection of subtle tissue changes in longitudinal clinical diffusion MRI data. The absence of a significant statistical difference between populations in the dMRI parameters in this study suggests that the mTBI corresponded to acute post-injury clinical symptoms but that the injury was not severe enough to cause detectable microstructural damage/alterations, and that increased diffusion sensitization combined with improved analysis techniques may be needed. CLINICAL IMPACTThese findings suggest that acute mTBI (GCS[≥]13) may not be detectable with diffusion MRI. TRIAL REGISTRATIONClinicalTrials.gov NCT02556177