Figure 12.

Using neuroimaging findings to better understand the effects of TBI within a systems biology approach, the various circles highlight different neuroimaging and assessment methods that tap different levels of systems relations and/or pathology that could contribute to an integrative analysis of outcome from brain injury. At this point, this is merely a schematic representation showing how normative databases could be generated from different neuroimaging methods that yield unique information. For example, the different types of scans and scan sequences can be mined for structural, DTI and functional imaging metrics so that individual comparisons can be made within each data point in reference to a normative sample (center boxes reflecting statistical comparisons to normative samples), with the output displayed on a 3-D image of the brain. For this illustration just the structural defect in the left frontal region is highlighted in the 3-D image at the bottom. The colored lines represent different metrics extracted from the scan such that a statistical comparison can be made between a normative imaging dataset where individual patient neuroimaging data can be contrasted. Ultimately using neurocognitive probes based on some activation technique from functional neuroimaging integrated with correlative techniques that examine neuropsychological test findings and network integrity results, such findings could be presented in terms of their clinical relevance by a color-coded method that highlights where the most robust relations are.