Alzheimer disease: measuring loss of cerebral gray matter with MR imaging.

Abstract

The distributions of the cerebral gray matter, the white matter, and the intracranial cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) were measured in 14 patients with Alzheimer disease (AD) and in 14 healthy control subjects. The measurements, derived from two specifically designed magnetic resonance inversion-recovery sequences, compensate for partial signal averaging. The percentage of the gray matter in the brains of AD patients (44.9% +/- 4.4) was significantly lower than in control subjects (50.2% +/- 3.2). The most significant reduction (P less than .001) occurred in the temporal lobes (13.8%) and a central region (12.8); the reduction in frontal lobe (11.2%) and occipital lobe (9.2%) was also statistically significant (P less than .01). There was an increase in the CSF volume in the temporal, occipital, and frontal regions; no region showed a significant difference in the white matter content. The findings of diffuse changes and temporal lobe involvement in AD are consistent with pathologic observations of cortical cell loss.

Methods on Skull Stripping of MRI Head Scan Images—a Review

“…Because the brain images that have preprocessed with automatic skull stripping eventually lead to get better segmentation of different brain regions which results for accurate diagnosis of various brainrelated diseases. The brain regions must be skull-stripped prior to the application of other image processing algorithms such as image registration and warping [18], brain volumetric measurement [19], inhomogeneity correction [20], tissue classification [21], analysis of cortical structure [22], cortical surface reconstruction [23], cortical thickness estimation [24], identification of brain parts [25], multiple sclerosis analysis [26], Alzheimer's disease [27], schizophrenia [28], and monitoring the development or aging of the brain [29]. Some skull stripping results of 2D brain slices and 3D brain volumes are illustrated in Fig.…”

Changes of Magnetic Resonance Imaging on the Brain in Beagle Dogs with Aging

“…Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been used as a noninvasive and useful diagnostic technique for evaluating age related brain disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and dementia, indicating severe atrophy of the brain, hippocampus, amygdala, and temporal lobe, gray matter, and dilatation of ventricle space, and cortical sulci, [9,17,26,28,34]. However, age-associated similar changes of MRI was also observed in the clinically healthy human brain, indicating brain atrophy, dilatation of ventricle space and cortical sulci, hypo-intensity area in globus pallidus and substantia nigra, and hyper-intensity area in white matter [7,16,20,31].…”

Sulcal Segmentation for Cortical Thickness Measurements

“…Although cortical thickness varies between individuals, abnormally thick or thin cortex may correlate with specific neuropathology and neurological conditions (e.g. [3,4]) suggesting that thickness may be useful as a diagnostic tool.…”