Alaska Injury Law Blog
A new and powerful imaging technique has been developed that will allow doctors to clearly see the brain’s neural connections that have been broken by traumatic brain injury and other neurological disorders. High Definition Fiber Tracking may now give doctors a means of objectively determining how brain tissue has been injured. Conventional CT or MRI scans often miss brain injuries because they show no brain changes, even though the patient continues to struggle with the devastating consequences of brain injury. HDFT is apparently able to reveal the brain’s wiring in such vivid detail that pinpoint breaks in fiber tracts that contain the brain’s critical neuronal connections can be found, thereby allowing doctors to identify any part of the brain that has lost its connectivity. HDFT is not widely available to patients, but may soon provide promising help in the diagnosis and treatment of those suffering from traumatic brain injury.
Source:
High-definition fiber tracking for assessment of neurological deficit in a case of traumatic brain injury: finding, visualizing, and interpreting small sites of damage.
Journal of Neurosurgery Posted online on March 2, 2012.