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Magnetoencephalography (MEG) Slow-Wave Imaging for Diagnosing Non-acute Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

  • Imaging of CNS Trauma (P Mukherjee, Section Editor)
  • Published:
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Abstract

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is a leading cause of sustained impairment in military and civilian populations. However, mTBI is difficult to detect using conventional MRI or CT, even in patients with persistent postconcussive symptoms (PCS). Injured brain tissues in mTBI patients generate abnormal slow-waves (1–4 Hz) that can be measured by resting-state magnetoencephalography (MEG). We describe a voxel-based MEG slow-wave imaging approach for detecting abnormality in mTBI patients with persistent PCS on a single-subject basis (Huang et al., Neuroimage Clin 5:109–119, 2014). A normative database from 79 healthy control subjects was established for all brain voxels. High-resolution MEG source magnitude images were obtained by the Fast-VESTAL method (Huang et al., Neuroimage 84:585–604, 2014). In 84 mTBI patients (36 from blasts, and 48 from non-blast causes), this method detected abnormalities with positive detection rates of 84, 86, and 83 % for the combined (blast plus non-blast), blast, and non-blast mTBI groups, respectively, with no false-positives in the control subjects.

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Acknowledgments

Figures 1, 2, and 3 were previously published in the journal NeuroImage: Clinical, and the text of this article is excerpted from that publication: [18••]. This work was supported in part by Merit Review Grants from the Department of Veterans Affairs to M.X. Huang (I01-CX000499, NURC-022-10F, NEUC-044-06S), R.R. Lee, D.L. Harrington (I01-CX000146), National Football League Charity Grant (M.X. Huang and R.R. Lee), McDonnell Foundation via the Brain Trauma Foundation (PI: J. Ghajar;site PIs: R.R. Lee and M.X. Huang), and MRS-II from Headquarters Marine Corps (D.G. Baker, M.A. Geyer, M.X. Huang, V.B. Risbrough).

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  1. Department of Radiology, VA San Diego Healthcare System, and University of California, San Diego, 3350 La Jolla Village Drive, MC 114, San Diego, CA, 92161, USA

    Mingxiong Huang & Roland R. Lee

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Mingxiong Huang and Roland R. Lee each declare no potential conflicts of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with animal subjects performed by any of the authors. As noted in the text:  All human participants gave written informed consent for study procedures, which were reviewed and approved by institutional review boards of the VA San Diego Healthcare System and Naval Health Research Center at San Diego.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Imaging of CNS Trauma.

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Huang, M., Lee, R.R. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) Slow-Wave Imaging for Diagnosing Non-acute Mild Traumatic Brain Injury. Curr Radiol Rep 3, 41 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40134-015-0121-0

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