Worldwide elderly traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients tend to become an increasing burden to the society. Thus, a faster and less expensive way of evaluating TBI victims is needed. In the present study we investigated if optical coherence tomography (OCT) could be used as such a method. By using an animal model, we established if OCT can detect cortical changes in the acute phase of a penetrating TBI, in young (5–7 months) and old (20–22 months) rats. Due to the long‐term evolution of TBI's, we wanted to investigate to what extent OCT could detect changes within the cortex in the chronic phase. Adult (7–12 months) male rats were used. Surprisingly, OCT imaging of the normal hemisphere was able to discriminate age‐related differences in the mean gray values (MGV) of recorded pixels (p = .032). Furthermore, in the acute phase of TBI, OCT images recorded at 24 hr after the injury showed differences between the apparent damaged area of young and aged animals. Changes of MGV and skewness were only recorded 48 hr after injury. Monitoring the chronical evolution of the TBI with OCT revealed changes over time exceeding the normal range recorded for MGV, skewness and kurtosis, 14 and 21 days after TBI. Although in the present study we still used an extremely invasive approach, as technology improves, less invasive and non‐harmful ways of recording OCT may allow for an objective way to detect changes within the brain structure after brain injuries.

中文翻译：

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实验性颅脑损伤的光学相干断层扫描显微术

世界范围内的老年创伤性脑损伤（TBI）患者往往成为社会越来越大的负担。因此，需要一种更快、更便宜的评估 TBI 受害者的方法。在本研究中，我们调查了光学相干断层扫描 (OCT) 是否可以用作这种方法。通过使用动物模型，我们确定 OCT 是否可以检测年轻（5-7 个月）和老年（20-22 个月）大鼠穿透性 TBI 急性期的皮质变化。由于 TBI 的长期演变，我们想调查 OCT 可以在多大程度上检测慢性期皮质内的变化。使用成年（7-12 个月）雄性大鼠。令人惊讶的是，正常半球的 OCT 成像能够区分记录像素的平均灰度值 (MGV) 的年龄相关差异 ( p= .032）。此外，在 TBI 的急性期，受伤后 24 小时记录的 OCT 图像显示年轻和年老动物的明显受损区域之间存在差异。MGV 和偏度的变化仅在受伤后 48 小时记录。用 OCT 监测 TBI 的慢性演变显示，随着时间的推移，TBI 后 14 天和 21 天的变化超过了记录的 MGV、偏度和峰度的正常范围。尽管在本研究中我们仍然使用了一种极具侵入性的方法，但随着技术的进步，记录 OCT 的侵入性较小且无害的方法可能允许以客观的方式检测脑损伤后大脑结构内的变化。