A method to increase the reliability and clinical utility of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in single subjects and a semi-automated method of identifying and quantifying small hemorrhages using susceptibility-weighted images (SWI) of single subjects include storing an image template formed from control subjects, storing a brain image of the single subject, correcting for image acquisition differences of the control subjects and single subject, and performing regional analysis of the brain image of the single subject. The method may include analysis of fractional anisotropy values that are age-corrected between the control subjects and the single subject before performing voxel-based analysis (VBA), and a hybrid VBA and tract-based spatial statistical (TBSS) analysis with the VBA and TBSS results combined using a statistical calculation. The resulting combined DTI image may be further combined with an SWI image, FLAIR image, and/or T1 image of the single subject.
Traumatic brain injury diffusion tensor and susceptibility weighted imaging