Modelling the distribution of white matter hyperintensities due to ageing on MRI images using Bayesian inference

Publication date: Available online 22 October 2018Source: NeuroImageAuthor(s): Vaanathi Sundaresan, Ludovica Griffanti, Petya Kindalova, Fidel Alfaro-Almagro, Giovanna Zamboni, Peter M. Rothwell, Thomas E. Nichols, Mark JenkinsonAbstractWhite matter hyperintensities (WMH), also known as white matter lesions, are localised white matter areas that appear hyperintense on MRI scans. WMH commonly occur in the ageing population, and are often associated with several factors such as cognitive disorders, cardiovascular risk factors, cerebrovascular and neurodegenerative diseases. Despite the fact that some links between lesion location and parametric factors such as age have already been established, the relationship between voxel-wise spatial distribution of lesions and these factors is not yet well understood. Hence, it would be of clinical importance to model the distribution of lesions at the population-level and quantitatively analyse the effect of various factors on the lesion distribution model.In this work we compare various methods, including our proposed method, to generate voxel-wise distributions of WMH within a population with respect to various factors. Our proposed Bayesian spline method models the spatio-temporal distribution of WMH with respect to a parametric factor of interest, in this case age, within a population. Our probabilistic model takes as input the lesion segmentation binary maps of subjects belonging to various age groups and provides a population-level ...

Source: NeuroImage - October 22, 2018 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research