ABSTRACT
Objective To explore the value of diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) in combination with susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI) in prognosis prediction of traumatic axonal injury (TAI).Methods A retrospective study of 75 patients with TAI was performed to analyze the clinical data and the follow-up prognosis in the 6 months after injury.The detection rate of TAI lesion by DWI,SWI and conventional MRI was compared.Multiple factors analysis applied logistic regression analysis to analyze the relationship between associated factors and prognosis.Results The average detected TAI lesions were (19.92 ± 8.62) by DWI and (22.17 ± 11.72) by SWI,which had no significant differences (t=1.24,P＞0.05),but there was a significant difference bettween by conventional MRI and by DWI or SWI (all P＜0.05).DWI was more sensitive to non-hemorrhagic lesions and SWI was more sensitive to hemorrhagic lesions.However,the lesions revealed by them existed the overlap of location and pathology of lesions.Patients with poor outcomes had more number of central lesions than those patient with good outcomes (t=2.455,P＜ 0.05).Logistic regression analysis revealed that the predictive accuracy provided by the combination with imaging and clinical factors was 95.7 ％.Conclusions DWI and SWI both are sensitive to TAI lesions,and have ability to detect the lesions with different pathological characteristics,separately.Accurate prognosis prediction for patients with TAI may be provided by the combination of clinical and imaging factors.