Ventricular volume and dementia progression in the Cardiovascular Health Study

Abstract

Elevated cerebral ventricular volume may be associated with dementia risk and progression. A fullyautomated technique that agreed highly with radiological readings was used to estimate lateral ventricle volume on MR scans done at baseline in 1997-99 of 377 subjects in the Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS) from the Pittsburgh Center. 327 subjects were normal or diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) at baseline and were evaluated 4 years later. Baseline ventricular volume was analyzed in multivariate models with age, gender, education level, presence and incidence of cerebral infarcts, and dementia category (normal, MCI, or dementia) at baseline and follow-up as fixed effects. Ventricular volume at baseline was significantly higher among subjects normal at baseline and demented 4 years later. Age, gender, education level, and dementia progression were significant factors affecting ventricular volume. Ventricular volume was higher in dementia compared to MCI, higher in MCI compared to controls, and higher in Possible-Alzheimer's-disease (AD) dementia compared to Probable-AD. Larger ventricles in healthy subjects may indicate susceptibility to, or progression of, dementia-related pathology.

Three-dimensional mapping of the lateral ventricles in autism

“…If automated ventricular segmentation methods become as reliable as manual tracing, these shape analysis methods may be efficiently extended to larger samples. We are currently validating more automated approaches for creating these surface maps (Carmichael et al, 2007). In this study, a 9-parameter global scaling transform was applied to each individual brain, to match the standardized average brain template.…”

Brain Mapping as a Tool to Study Neurodegeneration

“…61 Studies are currently under way to define ventricular changes in subjects with MCI and AD. A similar approach was used by Carmichael et al, 42 who reported that among normal subjects larger ventricles at baseline were predictive of future progression to dementia.…”

“…41 Ventricular enlargement appears to have a higher predictive value in the earlier transition stages as opposed to the later stagethat is, from normal cognition to MCI or AD and less so from MCI to AD. 13,42 VBM has also been used to reveal the spatial profile of aging and gender effects in normal subjects, 28,43,44 frontotemporal and Lewy body dementia, [45][46][47][48] Parkinson's disease, and even herpes simplex encephalitis. 49 For analysis of cortical gray matter atrophy, VBM may not be optimal.…”

“…4), 59 others on large-deformation highdimensional techniques 60 or on fluid-based registration of structural data within or across subjects. 42,61 Rather than building 3D average surface meshes from manually derived traces of the hippocampus, the highdimensional modeling approach uses an elastic registration method to deform a hippocampal surface template onto the scans of new subjects, adapting to anatomical shape differences. In this way it is a variant of the TBM approach, which uses fluid registration to measure volume change, and the hippocampal radial atrophy technique, which uses the surface models to measure local changes on the hippocampus.…”

“…42 These methods provide maps of statistics that are often better able to detect subtle or localized atrophy than traditional numeric summaries. Even so, clinical trials often require neuroimaging outcomes to be expressed in terms of a simple set of numeric summaries (rather than a 3D map, for example).…”