Corpus callosum fractional anisotropy from routine diffusion tensor imaging predicts dementia in older…

Cohort studyGeroScience· Aug 2026

Corpus callosum fractional anisotropy from routine diffusion tensor imaging predicts dementia in older adults beyond clinical risk factors.

Shahar Negev, Benjamin F Gruenbaum, Vladislav Zvenigorodsky … Matthew Boyko

Cognitive & DementiaCohort studyDiagnosisQ1IF 6.7

Corpus callosum imaging marker distinguishes dementia from normal aging with high accuracy

Corpus callosum fractional anisotropy from routine diffusion tensor imaging predicts dementia in older adults beyond clinical risk factors.

Shahar Negev … Matthew Boyko

GeroScience · Aug 2026

Background

Dementia arises from multifactorial neurodegenerative processes, with growing evidence implicating blood-brain barrier dysfunction, neuroinflammation, and vascular injury as contributors to progressive brain tissue damage.

Methods

We conducted a retrospective single-center study of 528 participants, including individuals with dementia (n = 176), age-matched cognitively normal older adults (n = 176), and a young healthy reference cohort (n = 176), all of whom underwent standardized 3-Tesla diffusion MRI.

n = 528 participants

Results

higher score means dementia and normal aging are more clearly distinguished

90.9%

Sensitivity

93.2%

Specificity

More results

Because decline in white matter microstructural integrity is a prominent feature of brain aging, biomarkers that capture this process may improve dementia risk stratification beyond conventional clinical factors.

More results

Corpus callosum fractional anisotropy showed the largest standardized coefficient within the penalized model, exceeding all demographic and clinical variables.

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Conclusion

These findings indicate that corpus callosum fractional anisotropy provides additional predictive value beyond conventional risk factors and support diffusion MRI as a potentially scalable biomarker of age-related white matter microstructural injury with potential utility for dementia risk stratification and biologically informed prevention strategies.

Corpus callosum fractional anisotropy from routine diffusion tensor imaging predicts dementia in older adults beyond clinical risk factors.

Corpus callosum fractional anisotropy from routine diffusion tensor imaging predicts dementia in older adults beyond clinical risk factors.

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