White matter integrity in highly traumatized adults with and without post-traumatic stress disorder.

Prior structural imaging studies of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have observed smaller volumes of the hippocampus and cingulate cortex, yet little is known about the integrity of white matter connections between these structures in PTSD samples. The few published studies using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to measure white matter integrity in PTSD have described individuals with focal trauma rather than chronically stressed individuals, which limits generalization of findings to this population; in addition, these studies have lacked traumatized comparison groups without PTSD. The present DTI study examined microstructural integrity of white matter tracts in a sample of highly traumatized African-American women with (n=25) and without (n=26) PTSD using a tract-based spatial statistical approach, with threshold-free cluster enhancement.

An Inexpensive and Programmable RF Transmitter Setup for Two-coil CASL.

An inexpensive and programmable RF transmitter for two-coil continuous arterial spin labeling (CASL) system is presented in this paper. While previous implementations of two-coil CASL require the expensive MR RF instruments, the present design utilizes a low-cost system on chip direct digital synthesizer and a mini-size communication RF power amplifier to generate the labeling RF waveform without sacrificing RF performance. Compared with a single RF channel two-coil CASL approach, this design requires minimal scanner hardware modifications.