Age-depending degeneration of white matter tracts – A DTI-Study

Introduction: In a multicenter-study we investigated the influence of aging on the structure of fibretracts in the brain in 415 healthy subjects between the age of 18 and 85 years. Previous studies have shown an age-depending degeneration in grey as well as white matter areas. The special imaging of fibretracts using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) as a magnetic resonance imaging technique and a statistical approach, called tract based spatial statistic (TBSS) allows us to detect white matter changes in large fibres within the whole cortex. As we know this has not been inspected in such a large and age-ranged pop…