Theoretical bounds on the change detection in brain volume measurements

Many neurodegenerative disorders, psychiatric disorders, and healthy aging are frequently associated with structural changes in the brain. As the brain develops over time, the cortical surface area, thickness, curvature and total gray matter volume change. It is highly likely that such age-relate...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Varadarajan Jayasudha
Other Authors: Vitali Zagorodnov
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: 2010
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10356/41578
Description
Summary:Many neurodegenerative disorders, psychiatric disorders, and healthy aging are frequently associated with structural changes in the brain. As the brain develops over time, the cortical surface area, thickness, curvature and total gray matter volume change. It is highly likely that such age-related surface deformations are not uniform. By measuring how such surface metrics change over time, the regions of the most rapid structural changes can be localized. These changes can cause alterations in the imaging properties of the brain tissue, as well as in morphometric properties of brain structures. The thickness of the cerebral cortex carries important information relative to aging. The MRI of the normal brain can be divided into three regions, white matter, gray matter and cerebrospinal fluid. The brain structures are anatomically defined by boundaries of these tissue classes. So it becomes important to use a method to segment the tissues into these categories. This is an important step in quantitative morphology of the brain.