Linking neural and clinical measures of glaucoma with diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI).

PurposeTo link optic nerve (ON) structural properties to clinical markers of glaucoma using advanced, semi-automated diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) tractography in human glaucoma patients.MethodsWe characterized optic neuropathy in patients with unilateral advanced-stage glaucoma (n = 6) using probabilistic dMRI tractography and compared their results to those in healthy controls (n = 6).ResultsWe successfully identified the ONs of glaucoma patients based on dMRI in all patients and confirmed that dMRI measures of the ONs correlated with clinical markers of glaucoma severity. Specifically, we found reduced fractional anisotropy (FA) in the ONs of eyes with advanced, as compared to mild, glaucoma (F(1,10) = 55.474, p ConclusionWe describe semi-automated methods to detect glaucoma-related structural changes using dMRI and confirm that they correlate with clinical measures of glaucoma