Microstructural White Matter Changes in Geriatric Bipolar Disorder

Abstract

The role of microstructural white matter changes impacting the clinical presentation of mood disorders in later life is increasingly recognized owing to advances in neuroimaging techniques. The newly developed diffusion MRI technique, Diffusion Kurtosis Imaging (DKI), is a clinically feasible and possibly more sensitive extension of the conventional diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). However, it has not been studied in the context of geriatric bipolar disorder (BD). In this study, we utilized DKI to assess its sensitivity in detecting microstructural changes in the brain in older adults with BD.