FACT SHEET
1. There are over 3 million TBI’s each year reported – CDC/NIH
2. The actual number is estimated to be 2-3X higher
3. Over 90% of the injuries are categorized as “mild”
4. Mild does not describe the severity of symptoms. It’s the categorization that really means there is no objective proof of the symptoms.
5. Consequently, millions of people each year are left to suffer.
6. The suffering can be and often is life changing and debilitating.
7. The typical diagnostic tool for imaging TBI’s is a standard MRI.
8. It can show a cracked skull or a brain bleed but not much else.
9. You might as well just take a selfie with a cell phone as to attempt to image the damage associated with “mild” traumatic brain injury with a traditional MRI.
10. Dr. Huma Haider and her team have put together a protocol that has “brought to life” a twenty year old FDA approved technology.
11. The technology is called Diffusion Tensor Imaging.
12. DTI for short, is based on the simple principle of fluid dynamics.
13. Fluid behaves the same in a stream, ocean or brain as long as gravity is present
14. With the National Brain Injury Institute protocol, we are now imaging parts of the brain never before seen.
15. DTI has had over 20,000 peer reviewed studies done on it. In the medical world, it’s almost at the level of credibility as an X-ray.
16. It just hasn’t quite caught on yet with the general public or even the diagnostic imaging community.
17. That’s changing as many are discovering the value of Diffusion Tensor Imaging or DTI.
18. With it, we capture the motion of fluid through the white matter tracts of the brain.
19. The white matter tracts are the “wires”, the “conduits” through which the chemical and electrical machinations of the brain flow.
20. When there is a Mild TBI present, the injury will manifest in the form of severed nerve fibers or bursted neurons in the white matter tracts of the brain.
21. When we run the NBII/Dr. Haider protocol with the DTI sequencing on a particular type of MRI machine, we capture the motion of fluid from up to 30 different angles as it winds through the white matter tracts of the brain.
22. Back to fluid dynamics – We know from the 20,000 peer reviewed studies what normal looks like. We now are able to see where water, pushed through the white matter tracts via an MRI’s magnetic pulse, is behaving abnormally.
23. For example: We can see that the water should be moving left to right in a particular white matter tract but instead is moving up and down
24. Think of a stream of water. You see it bubbling and rolling down stream, right? What happens when it comes to a big stone in the water? It “diffuses” around it and over it, right?
25. We can now see the abnormal flow of fluid in the tiniest, microscopic portions of the brain. Not only can we see it, we can animate it and essentially fly you inside parts of the brain not previously visible and stand you right next to the injury. The encouraging part is every part of the brain is mapped. We know the function of each part of the brain. We are able to confidently match injury proof with manifested symptoms.
National Brain Injury