The forces generated by violent shaking or rotational injury (as in a passenger ejected from a moving vehicle) can produce stretching of axons in cerebral white matter, called diffuse axonal injury. The force may be strong enough to shear off axons, the ends of which retract into globoid shapes that appear with this silver stain of white matter as "retraction balls". CT imaging of the brain may show subtle petechial hemorrhages at the interface of gray and white matter.