GE Healthcare and the National Football League (NFL) made an official announcement on March 11 of their partnership on a new initiative dedicated to head health, with the primary goal of "better diagnosis, treatment and prevention of brain injury," said Roger Goodell, commissioner of the NFL, during a press briefing in the GE building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan.

The $40 million initiative, spanning four years, will mainly fuel research to better understand concussions and traumatic brain injury (TBI) with imaging. It also includes two technology challenges at $10 million apiece aimed at developing advanced tools to accurately speed up TBI diagnosis and find solutions to prevent it. The effort will benefit all sports — not just football — as well as American troops and civilians.

According to Dr. Geoffrey Manley, chief of neurosurgery at San Francisco General Hospital, the first step to any kind of effort like this should begin by accurately diagnosing concussions. He said there are currently 30 different diagnoses for what constitutes a concussion.
"It all starts with having a better diagnosis, then we can have a prognosis and better treatment," he said.

Jeff Immelt, chairman and CEO of GE, said "It's an incredibly important technology field," fed in large part by the surge in research in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease recently.

However, much of the research on TBI and concussion, also known as mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI), is still at the beginning stages. On March 12, a new study published online in Radiology found that a single concussion may cause lasting brain damage. After analyzing regional gray matter and white matter volumes on 3-D MR images of patients one year after concussion, researchers found that there was measurable global and regional brain atrophy in MTBI patients, according to a statement from the Radiological Society of North America.

Symptoms of concussion include headache, dizziness, memory loss, depression and anxiety, some of which can last for years after initial trauma.

While this study highlights the lasting effects of a single concussion, more attention has been focused on investigating the long-term effects of concussion. In fact, just a few months ago, the Institute of Medicine announced an extensive study to examine concussion in grade school athletes through adolescence and early adulthood.

According to Richard Hausmann, president and CEO of MR for GE Healthcare, MR is one of the best technologies available to study the brain because it can pick up on subtle changes. And new quantification capabilities on MR exams might help experts achieve an objective method for identifying subtle changes in the brain.

"We need better diagnosis and treatment protocols and what will emerge is already at out fingertips," said Dr. Russell Lonser, chair of the NFL Head, Neck and Spine Committee.

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