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Abstract #0872

Detection of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Using in vivo Waveguide Elastography

Anthony J. Romano1, Jing Guo2, Torben Prokscha3, Sebastian Hirsch4, Juergen Braun5, Ingolf Sack3, Michael Scheel3

1Physical Acoustics, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, United States; 2Department of Radiology, Charite - University Medicine Berlin, Berlin, Germany; 3Department of Radiology, Charite-Universitatsmedizin, Berlin, Germany; 4Department of Radiology, Charit - Universittsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany; 5Institute of Medical Informatics, Charite - University Medicine Berlin, Berlin, Germany

We implemented a method called Waveguide Elastography in the analysis of orthotropic elastic parameters of the corticospinal tracts (CSTs) in the brains of five healthy volunteers. Here, we extend this method in an attempt to detect Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) by analyzing the stiffness of the CSTs of 10 subjects: These included five healthy controls and five patients who present with ALS. We found that we were able to detect a 5% reduction in shear stiffness in the patients vs the controls, and using a Mann-Whitney-U test, we obtained a p = 0.008 demonstrating significant differences between the two groups.

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Keywords

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