Evaluation of human brain aging via diffusion structural characteristics

Abstract

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is a novel imaging technique, which can evaluate the variation of white matter micro-structure in brain aging. Four network properties of characteristic path length (Lp), clustering coefficient (Cp), global efficiency (Eglobal), local efficiency (Elocal) were measured for the whole brain (WB) and specific cortex between the young and the old one. The results showed that Eglobal decreased and Lp, Cp, Elocal increased with the aging. We draw a conclusion that the chosen parameters of Lp, Cp, Eglobal, Elocal could evaluate the white matter (WM) variation correlated with the brain aging. It used as gold markers for the changes of WB structure.