Six largest white matter clusters all demonstrating significant positive association between fractional anisotropy and central retinal arteriolar equivalent independent of age and after controlling for central retinal venular equivalent (P < .001). Each column shows 3 orthogonal orientations of the average normalized structural image illustrating a significant cluster (orange and yellow; minimum cluster size of 100 contiguous voxels) with the axes passing through the centroid of the cluster.
aSignificant at P < .0005.
Very importantly, 8 of the clusters showing significant WM FA reduction in MetS also demonstrated positive associations between FA and CRAE (Figure 4), suggesting that the subtle WM damage demonstrated in the FA analyses was likely vascular in nature.