NeuroQuant Used to Prove Traumatic Brain Injuries
I have just learned of NeuroQuant – a new tool to objectively prove traumatic brain injury. I just read an interesting article in the Medical Law Report, January 2011 issue regarding a new objective test to document traumatic brain injury.
As we know, most patients with mild to moderate traumatic brain injury have normal diagnostic tests such as CT scans and MRIs. David Ross, M.D. a Virginia neuropsychiatrist, has pioneered NeuroQuant, a software program which has already been approved by the FDA for measuring brain MRI volume in patients with Alzheimer’s Disease. Dr. Ross has begun using the software to objectively document traumatic brain injury. Dr. Ross is presently affiliated with the Virginia Institute of Neuropsychiatry in Midlothian, Virginia.
Explains Dr. Ross: “We finally got a clearly objective lab test that no one can really refute. If we show the brain has shrunk or if they have abnormal diffusion tensor imaging, I think everyone has to agree that’s an objective sign of injury.”
As I understand it, the NeuroQuant software program automatically identifies several MRI brain regions and measures the volume of each. These data are then compared to MRI data from normal control subjects. Analyses of individual patients using NeuroQuant has shown that most patients had evidence of brain atrophy; in contrast, only a small minority of patients had brain atrophy based on tradition (visual inspection-based) interpretation by a radiologist.