Voxel-wise deviations from healthy aging for the detection of region-specific atrophy

Publication date: Available online 19 September 2018Source: NeuroImage: ClinicalAuthor(s): Stefan Klöppel, Shan Yang, Elias Kellner, Marco Reisert, Bernhard Heimbach, Horst Urbach, Jennifer Linn, Stefan Weidauer, Tamara Andres, Maximilian Bröse, Jacob Lahr, Niklas Lützen, Philipp T. Meyer, Jessica Peter, Ahmed Abdulkadir, Sabine Hellwig, Karl Egger, for the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging InitiativeAbstractThe identification of pathological atrophy in MRI scans requires specialized training, which is scarce outside dedicated centers. We sought to investigate the clinical usefulness of computer-generated representations of local grey matter (GM) loss or increased volume of cerebral fluids (CSF) as normalized deviations (z-scores) from healthy aging to either aid human visual readings or directly detect pathological atrophy.Two experienced neuroradiologists rated atrophy in 30 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), 30 patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), 30 with dementia due to Lewy-body disease (LBD) and 30 healthy controls (HC) on a three-point scale in 10 anatomical regions as reference gold standard. Seven raters, varying in their experience with MRI diagnostics rated all cases on the same scale once with and once without computer-generated volume deviation maps that were overlaid on anatomical slices. In addition, we investigated the predictive value of the computer generated deviation maps on their own for the detection of atrophy as identified by the gold st...
Source: NeuroImage: Clinical - Category: Radiology Source Type: research