There is a paucity of accurate and reliable biomarkers to detect traumatic brain injury, grade its severity, and model post-traumatic brain injury (TBI) recovery. This gap could be addressed via advances in brain mapping which define injury signatures and enable tracking of post-injury trajectories at the individual level. Mapping of molecular and anatomical changes and of modifications in functional activation supports the conceptual paradigm of TBI as a disorder of large-scale neural connectivity. Imaging approaches with particular relevance are magnetic resonance techniques (diffusion weighted imaging, diffusion tensor imaging, susceptibility weighted imaging, magnetic resonance spectroscopy, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and positron emission tomographic methods including molecular neuroimaging). Inferences from mapping represent unique endophenotypes which have the potential to transform classification and treatment of patients with TBI. Limitations of these methods, as well as future research directions, are highlighted.
Keywords: Amyloid beta; Arterial spin labeling; Cognition; Coma; Diffusion tensor imaging; Diffusion-weighted imaging; Electroencephalography; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Magnetic resonance imaging; Magnetic resonance spectroscopy; Magnetoencephalography; Neural plasticity; Neurologic recovery; Positron imaging tomography; Susceptibility-weighted imaging; Tau protein; Translocator protein; Traumatic axonal injury; Traumatic brain injury.