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 standardized data acquisition, presentation and instrumentation standards. The Diffusion Tensor Imaging Reference Standard (DTIRS) will standardize diagnostic DTI information and its presentation as an image. DTIRS will provide hardware (a standard phantom) and a validating procedure by which calibration data are to be obtained, processed, and compared to absolute physical standards. The DTIRS phantom's construction continuously controls fiber tension and placement; this ensures high accuracy and repeatability anisotropic 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 volumes with anisotropic diffusion properties to algorithmically identify large regions of interest which become the basis of calibration uniformity tests.