MRI evaluation of axonal reorganization after bone marrow stromal cell treatment of traumatic brain injury

We treated traumatic brain injury (TBI) with human bone marrow stromal cells (hMSCs) and evaluated the effect of treatment on white matter reorganization using MRI. We subjected male Wistar rats (n = 17) to controlled cortical impact and either withheld treatment (controls; n = 9) or inserted collagen scaffolds containing hMSCs (n = 8). Six weeks later, the rats were sacrificed and MRI revealed selective migration of grafted neural progenitor cells towards the white matter reorganized boundary of the TBI‐induced lesion. Histology confirmed that the white matter had been reorganized, associated with increased fractional anisotropy (FA; p