European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Background
With increase in the proportion of aging dependent population, the need for understanding the
pathogenesis of aging and the risk factors related to age related neurodegeneration is
increasing with definite certainty. Studies pertaining to age related neurodegeneration will
play a role in mitigating the impending issues related to aging population. Studies have
shown the relatively greater involvement of white matter compared to the grey matter with
age and therefore the evaluation of white matter tracts will further shed light onto the
processes that occur with aging.(1)
Methodology
MRI was performed on a 3T MR scanner (General Electric, Signa Pioneer) with a head‑neck
45 coil. The subjects’ brains were evaluated with conventional imaging using routine axial
T2/T1‑weighted and diffusion-tensor imaging (DTI) sequences. The DTI acquisition protocol
which was used is a dual-spin echo single shot echo-planar imaging sequence with the
following parameters: Forty 3mm thick slices with no inter-slice gap. TR=6400ms,
TE=88ms. FOV= 220x220mm2, matrix of 128x128 zero filled to 256x256. DTI was
performed with b=1000s/mm2 using 25 different encoding directions. The Total scanning
time was 11 mins. Various white matter tracts were evaluated from the DTI sequences using
fibertractographyfollowing which the average Apparent Diffusion Coefficient (ADC) and
Fractional Anisotropy (FA) values of each fiber was computed and tabulated with respect to
age.