Author(s)

Hongyan Chen¹, Kai Wang², Jingfan Yao², Jianping Dai³, Jun Ma¹, Shaowu Li³, Lin Ai⁴, Qian Chen⁴, Xuzhu Chen¹, Yumei Zhang^4*

¹Department of Radiology, Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China.
²Capital Medical University, Beijing, China.
³Beijing Neurosurgical Insititute, Beijing, China.
⁴Department of Neurology, Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive, neurodegenerative disorder characterized by impairments in multiple cognitive domains and it is hard to diagnose in early stage because it’s not easy to recognize and develop slowly. In this study, we try to evaluate the difference of white matter between AD and health volunteers using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and try to provide some evidence for diagnose AD in early stage. Twelve elderly Chinese patients with AD and twelve healthy volunteers were recruited and underwent DTI. The raw diffusion data were dealt with the toolkit of FSL image post-processing. Fractional anisotrogy (FA) data were then carried out by using tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS). The result showed that the FA of cingulum, hippocampus, corticospinal tract, and inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus significantly reduced in AD patients than that of volunteers. This indicated that the integrity of white matter tracts in these regions with AD was disturbed. On the other hand, the FA of other encephalic regions had no discrepancy compared with that of healthy volunteers. FA values were found reduced significantly in AD patients, especially in the posterior of the brain. These findings may provide image methods to diagnose patients with early stage of AD.

Alzheimer Disease, Diffusion Tensor Imaging, Fractional Anisotropy, TBSS

Chen, H. , Wang, K. , Yao, J. , Dai, J. , Ma, J. , Li, S. , Ai, L. , Chen, Q. , Chen, X. and Zhang, Y. (2015) White Matter Changes in Alzheimer’s Disease Revealed by Diffusion Tensor Imaging with TBSS. World Journal of Neuroscience, 5, 58-65. doi: 10.4236/wjns.2015.51007.