The American College of Radiology (ACR) and Cohen Veterans Bioscience plan to develop an imaging reference library for traumatic brain injury (TBI).
Mild TBI affects an estimated 1.5 million people in the U.S. each year, and although most cases cause no visible signs of brain damage, the injuries lead to long-term cognitive or behavioral problems in up to 20% of patients, the organizations said.
Cohen Veterans Bioscience and the ACR's Head Injury Institute will collect standardized advanced neuroimaging scans from 3,000 adult volunteers. The MRI approaches used will include diffusion-tensor imaging, functional connectivity, perfusion-weighted imaging, and volumetric imaging.
The studies will be conducted at Lackland Air Force Base, the San Antonio Military Medical Center, Baylor College of Medicine, and the University of Virginia Health System. Imaging data, along with demographic and neurocognitive assessment information, will become the basis for the library, according to Cohen Veterans Bioscience and the ACR.
