Considering the high prevalence of both white matter injury on
neonatal neuroimaging and attentional difficulties in the VPT population,
an exploration of white matter tracts thought to be related to
attention is worthy of investigation. White matter can be examined
using diffusion-weighted MRI (dMRI), a technique which models
water diffusion properties and provides several key parameters that
offer information regarding white matter microstructural organization.
Fractional anisotropy (FA) is the metric used to determine the proportion
of directional diffusion existing within a voxel (Pierpaoli and
Basser, 1996). Mean diffusivity (MD) reflects the magnitude of overall
diffusionwithin each voxel. In order to obtain additional microstructural
information, the axial diffusivity (diffusion along the prominent
diffusion orientation; AD) and radial diffusivity (diffusion perpendicular
to the prominent diffusion orientation; RD) parameters can also be
investigated.