Morphology-Based Cortical Thickness Estimation

We describe a new approach to estimating the cortical thickness of human brains using magnetic resonance imaging data. Our algorithm is part of a processing chain consisting of a brain segmentation (skull stripping), as well as white and grey matter segmentation procedures. In this paper, only the grey matter segmentation together with the cortical thickness estimation is described. In contrast to many existing methods, our estimation method is voxel-based and does not use any surface meshes. While this fact poses a principal limit on the accuracy that can be achieved by our method, it offers tremendous advantages with respect to practical applicability. In particular, it is applicable to data sets showing severe cortical atrophies that involve areas of high curvature and extremely thin gyral stalks. In contrast to many other methods, it is entirely automatic and very fast with computation times of a few minutes. Our method has been used in two clinical studies involving a total of 27 patients and 23 healthy subjects.

[1]  A. Toga,et al.  Cortical variability and asymmetry in normal aging and Alzheimer's disease. , 1998, Cerebral cortex.

[2]  Kecheng Liu,et al.  Shape recovery algorithms using level sets in 2-D/3-D medical imagery: a state-of-the-art review , 2002, IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine.

[3]  I. Aharon,et al.  Three‐dimensional mapping of cortical thickness using Laplace's Equation , 2000, Human brain mapping.

[4]  Robert T. Schultz,et al.  Segmentation and Measurement of the Cortex from 3D MR Images , 1998, MICCAI.

[5]  A M Dale,et al.  Measuring the thickness of the human cerebral cortex from magnetic resonance images. , 2000, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[6]  King-Sun Fu,et al.  A parallel thinning algorithm for 3-D pictures , 1981 .

[7]  Antoine Manzanera,et al.  N-dimensional Skeletonization: a Unified Mathematical Framework , 2002, J. Electronic Imaging.

[8]  Guillermo Sapiro,et al.  Creating connected representations of cortical gray matter for functional MRI visualization , 1997, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.

[9]  Michael I. Miller,et al.  Bayesian Construction of Geometrically Based Cortical Thickness Metrics , 2000, NeuroImage.

[10]  Anders M. Dale,et al.  Cortical Surface-Based Analysis I. Segmentation and Surface Reconstruction , 1999, NeuroImage.

[11]  Jerry L. Prince,et al.  Reconstruction of the human cerebral cortex from magnetic resonance images , 1999, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.

[12]  Gilles Bertrand,et al.  A Boolean characterization of three-dimensional simple points , 1996, Pattern Recognition Letters.

[13]  D G Norris,et al.  Reduced power multislice MDEFT imaging , 2000, Journal of magnetic resonance imaging : JMRI.

[14]  Alan C. Evans,et al.  Measurement of Cortical Thickness Using an Automated 3-D Algorithm: A Validation Study , 2001, NeuroImage.

[15]  Gabriella Sanniti di Baja,et al.  Computing skeletons in three dimensions , 1999, Pattern Recognit..

[16]  Michael I. Miller,et al.  Brain Segmentation and the Generation of Cortical Surfaces , 1999, NeuroImage.

[17]  Demetri Terzopoulos,et al.  Deformable models in medical image analysis: a survey , 1996, Medical Image Anal..

[18]  Alan C. Evans,et al.  Automated 3-D Extraction of Inner and Outer Surfaces of Cerebral Cortex from MRI , 2000, NeuroImage.

[19]  Ravi S. Menon,et al.  Imaging at high magnetic fields: initial experiences at 4 T. , 1993, Magnetic resonance quarterly.

[20]  Jerry L. Prince,et al.  An active contour model for mapping the cortex , 1995, IEEE Trans. Medical Imaging.

[21]  C. Economo,et al.  Die Cytoarchitektonik der Hirnrinde des erwachsenen Menschen , 1925 .

[22]  Jun-ichiro Toriwaki,et al.  New algorithms for euclidean distance transformation of an n-dimensional digitized picture with applications , 1994, Pattern Recognit..

[23]  K. Brodmann.  Vergleichende Lokalisationslehre der Großhirnrinde : in ihren Prinzipien dargestellt auf Grund des Zellenbaues , 1985 .