Method and system for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) diagnosis using magnetic resonance spectroscopy

A magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS)-based diagnostic system for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and/or mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI), comprising:

• a MRS system for collecting MRS signals from a Posterior Cingulate Gyrus (PCG) of patients;
• and
• a computer system that creates and executes a diagnostic tool that uses wavelet analysis of the MRS signals from the PCG to diagnose patients with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and/or mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI) from the MRS signals, wherein the computer system generates clean MRS signals by averaging the MRS signals for each coil of the MRS system, performs wavelet decomposition on the clean MRS signals and then extracts wavelet features from the clean MRS signals as inputs to the diagnostic tool, wherein the wavelet features are locations in ppm (parts per million) and coefficients in a wavelet expansion of the clean MRS signals and wherein in a training phase, the diagnostic tool creates a subset of wavelet features determined by adding a wavelet feature to the subset that has a highest performance for discrimination and then adds additional wavelet features to the subset when the additional wavelet features increase the performance of the subset, wherein the diagnostic tool employs the wavelet features at 3.89 and 1.14 ppm to diagnose between mTBI and PTSD.