Altered Cerebellar White Matter Integrity in Patients with Mild Traumatic Brain Injury in the Acute Stage

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Imaging studies of traumatic brain injury demonstrate that the cerebellum is often affected. We aim to examine fractional anisotropy alteration in acute-phase mild traumatic brain injury patients in cerebellum-related white matter tracts. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This prospective study included 47 mild traumatic brain injury patients in the acute stage and 37 controls. MR imaging and neurocognitive tests were performed in patients within 7 days of injury. White matter integrity was examined by using diffusion tensor imaging. We used three approaches, tract-based spatial statistics, graphical-model-based multivariate analysis, and region-of-interest analysis, to detect altered cerebellar white matter integrity in mild traumatic brain injury patients. RESULTS: Results from three analysis methods were in accordance with each other, and suggested fractional anisotropy in the middle cerebellar peduncle and the pontine crossing tract was changed in the acute-phase mild traumatic brain injury patients, relative to controls (adjusted p-value < 0.05). Higher fractional anisotropy in the middle cerebellar peduncle was associated with worse performance in the fluid cognition composite (r = -0.289, p-value = 0.037). CONCLUSION: Altered cerebellar fractional anisotropy in acute-phase mild traumatic brain injury patients is localized in specific regions and statistically associated with cognitive deficits detectable on neurocognitive testing.