MRE-based assessment of impairment of mechanical isolation at the skull-brain interface resulting from sports-related head impact exposure

Increasing recognition of the effect of repeated head impacts (RHI) in leading to neurologic impairment and higher risk of subsequent traumatic head injury, has motivated for developing technology to assess the status of the mechanism of mechanical isolation provided by the structures within the skull-brain interface, known as the pia-arachnoid complex (PAC). To evaluate the RHI-induced PAC alternations, we compared MR elastography-based measures (rotational transmission ratio [Rtr] and cortical normalized octahedral shear strain [NOSS]) between healthy and sports-related RHI subjects. Significantly higher Rtr and cortical NOSS were found among RHI individuals, showing their potential in assessing the effect of RHI.