White Matter Lesion Penumbra Shows Abnormalities on Structural and Physiologic MRIs in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults Cohort.

Even in relatively healthy 43- to 56-year-old subjects with small white matter lesion burden, structural and functional MR imaging in penumbral tissue reveals significant signal abnormalities versus white matter lesions and other normal WM. Findings suggest that the onset of WM injury starts by middle age and involves substantially more tissue than evident from focal white matter lesions visualized on structural imaging.