Neuroimaging of structural pathology and connectomics in traumatic brain injury: toward personalized outcome prediction

journal articleRecent contributions to the body of knowledge on traumatic brain injury (TBI) favor the view that multimodal neuroimaging using structural and functionalmagnetic resonance imaging (MRI and fMRI, respectively) as well as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has excellent potential to identify novel biomarkers and predictors of TBI outcome. This is particularly the casewhen suchmethods are appropriately combinedwith volumetric/morphometric analysis of brain structures and with the exploration of TBI-related changes in brain network properties at the level of the connectome. In this context, our present review summarizes recent developments on the roles of these two techniques in the search for novel structural neuroimaging biomarkers that have TBI outcome prognostication value. The themes being explored cover notable trends in this area of research, including (1) the role of advanced MRI processingmethods in the analysis of structural pathology, (2) the use of brain connectomics and network analysis to identify outcome biomarkers, and (3) the application of multivariate statistics to predict outcome using neuroimagingmetrics. The goal of the review is to draw the community's attention to these recent advances on TBI outcome prediction methods and to encourage the development of new methodologies whereby structural neuroimaging can be used to identify biomarkers of TBI outcome