FIG. 1.

Overview of study design. The Late Effects of Traumatic Brain Injury (LETBI) study integrates in vivo data (left) and ex vivo data (right) to comprehensively characterize post-traumatic neurodegeneration. LETBI participants undergo extensive cognitive, behavioral, and neurological examinations. In addition, structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are performed and blood samples are drawn for proteomic and genomic analysis to identify in vivo biomarkers of post-traumatic neuropathology. Autopsied brain specimens undergo gross pathological analysis, histopathological analysis including Histelide and whole–mount analysis, and ultra-high resolution ex vivo MRI on 3 Tesla and 7 Tesla MRI scanners. Co-registration of ex vivo and in vivo MRI data enables determination of whether pathologically relevant ex vivo lesions were present during life. In vivo signatures of postmortem pathology are then correlated with cognitive and behavioral data to characterize the clinical phenotype(s) associated with pathological lesions. Color image is available online at www.liebertpub.com/neu