title: A T1 and DTI fused 3D Corpus Callosum analysis in pre- vs. post-season contact sports players.
abstract: Sports related traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a worldwide public health issue, and damage to the corpus callosum (CC) has been considered as an important indicator of TBI. However, contact sports players suffer repeated hits to the head during the course of a season even in the absence of diagnosed concussion, and less is known about their effect on callosal anatomy. In addition, T1-weighted and diffusion tensor brain magnetic resonance images (DTI) have been analyzed separately, but a joint analysis of both types of data may increase statistical power and give a more complete understanding of anatomical correlates of subclinical concussions in these athletes. Here, for the first time, we fuse T1 surface-based morphometry and a new DTI analysis on 3D surface representations of the CCs into a single statistical analysis on these subjects. Our new combined method successfully increases detection power in detecting differences between pre- vs. post-season contact sports players. Alterations are found in the ventral genu, isthmus, and splenium of CC. Our findings may inform future health assessments in contact sports players. The new method here is also the first truly multimodal diffusion and T1-weighted analysis of the CC in TBI, and may be useful to detect anatomical changes in the corpus callosum in other multimodal datasets.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA, USA ; Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles CA, USA.
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lao
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles CA, USA ; Department of Radiology, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Meng
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Law
authors.affiliation: School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA, USA ; Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles CA, USA.
authors.forename: Niharika
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Gajawelli
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles CA, USA.
authors.forename: Lauren
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Haas
authors.affiliation: School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA.
authors.forename: Yalin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA, USA ; Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles CA, USA.
authors.forename: Natasha
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Leporé