Development of Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) Phantoms to Enhance the Diagnosis of Moderate Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

Survival rates for soldiers injured by IED blasts and similar trauma are enhanced by prompt, high-quality medical care. Among the survivors, however, increasing numbers report symptoms of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Mild and moderate TBIs with no skull-penetrating wounds are difficult to detect and diagnose with commonly used diagnostic systems. Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI), a subset of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), shows great promise to diagnose TBIs and guide treatment planning, but the technique currently lacks a standardized calibration protocol. The Diffusion Tensor Imaging Reference Standard (DTIRS) will standardize calibration of diagnostic DTI equipment, software and analysis. DTIRS will provide hardware (a standard phantom) a validating procedure by which calibration data are to be obtained, and a suite of vendor-independent standard analysis software which evaluates system performance. The DTIRS phantom"s construction continuously controls fiber tension and placement; this ensures high accuracy and repeatability of diffusion properties. Its innovative construction maximizes the number of voxels per slice which are used for calibration; this maximizes calibration speed and accuracy. The validation procedure takes advantage of the phantom"s shape and large features with anisotropic diffusion properties to algorithmically identify large regions of interest which become the basis of calibration and reproducibility tests.