Hi-def fiber tracking helps pinpoint brain damage

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have developed a new way to test for brain damage. This technique is called High Definition Fiber Tracking (HDFT) and maps the brain, taking data from 257 directions to virtually dissect the 40 major fiber tracts in the brain. This augments the latest state-of-the-art technique, which uses 51 directions; over five-fold and can map a million brain fibers. One map using this technique is shown below.

This technique may be able to identify where neuronal connections have been broken in head trauma patients and in certain neurological disorders. The HDFT uses MRI maps of brain-damaged patients and runs numerous algorhythyms on this data to view the brain's fiber tracts, each which consist of millions of fibers. These HDFT maps can be compared to those of healthy patients to determine where the broken connections are, which can be used to repair the problem.

This technique has already been used to help a patient. A 32-year old man crashed an ATV, putting him into a coma. CT scans and an MRI scan could not target the damaged area, but the HDFT could. The HDFT helped to identify which neural pathways were disrupted and allowed the patient, who initially lost movement of his left leg, arm, and hand, to regain movement of his leg and partial movement of his wrist and fingers.

An informational YouTube video of this process can be found here:

(video would not embed into blog for copyright reasons)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvyVRQcHoyQ&feature=player_embedded

The full article can be found here:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-57391015-247/hi-def-fiber-tracking-helps-pinpoint-brain-damage/?tag=txt;title