Structural integrity of medial temporal lobes of patients with acute mild traumatic brain injury

Abstract

Post-traumatic amnesia (PTA) is an acute characteristic of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and the duration of PTA is commonly used to estimate the severity of brain injury. In the context of mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI), PTA is an essential part of the routine clinical assessment. Macroscopic lesions in temporal lobes, especially hippocampal regions, are thought to be connected to memory loss. However, conventional neuroimaging has failed to reveal neuropathological correlates of PTA in MTBI. Texture analysis (TA) is an image analysis technique that quantifies the minor MRI signal changes among image pixels and, therefore, the variations in intensity patterns within the image. The objective of this work was to apply the TA technique to MR images of MTBI patients and control subjects, and to assess the microstructural damage in medial temporal lobes of patients with MTBI with definite PTA. TA was performed for fluidattenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) images of 50 MTBI patients and 50 age- and gender-matched controls in the regions of the amygdala, hippocampus, and thalamus. It was hypothesized that 1) there would be statistically significant differences in TA parameters between patients with MTBIs and controls, and 2) the duration of PTA would be related to TA parameters in patients with MTBI. No significant textural differences were observed between patients and controls in the regions of interest (p >0.01). No textural features were observed to correlate with the duration of PTA. Subgroup analyses were conducted on patients with PTA of >1h, (n =33) and compared the four TA parameters to the age- and gender-matched controls (n =33). The findings were similar. This study did not reveal significant textural changes in medial temporal structures that could be related to the duration of PTA.