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• Clinical Article •
Primary study of automatic segmentation and measurement of brain region volumes applicating in Alzheimer's disease diagnosis
LI Huabin  TANG Xiangqi  CHEN Yuan  XIAO Huanhui  WANG Silun 

Cite this article as: Li HB, Tang XQ, Chen Y, et al. Primary study of automatic segmentation and measurement of brain region volumes applicating in Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis[J]. Chin J Magn Reson Imaging, 2021, 12(6): 27-33. DOI:10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2021.06.006.


[Abstract] Objective To preliminarily investigate an automatic quantitative method for determining brain regional volume, and for detecting brain regional alterations in Alzheimer's disease. And then to assess the reliability and clinical value for AD diagnosis of the automatic quantitative method. Materials andMethods Structural MRI images were collected from 204 enrolled healthy volunteers. Volume of bilateral hippocampus, bilateral ventricles, bilateral caudate nucleus, bilateral putamen, and bilateral thalamus, were respectively measured by manual segmentation of 2 experienced experts and automatic measurement software. The volumetric data of the 10 regions measured by two methods were compared. Moreover, 34 AD patients, with 34 age- and sex-matched normal controls, were enrolled in the study. Volumes of 47 main brain regions (including frontal lobe, temporal lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe, insular lobe, posterior cingulate etc.) of AD and control groups were assessed by automatic measurement software. The difference of absolute volumes and relative volumes (absolute volume/brain parenchymal volume) of brain regions between the two groups were compared, respectively.Results The results showed that the volume of 10 selected brain regions measured by automatic measurement software had significant correlation with those by manual segmentation of experienced experts (Pearson's r2＞0.9). Bland-Altman analysis revealed that the coefficients of variation of volume difference were less than 5%. On the other hand, volume of ventricle, including lateral ventricles, third ventricle, fourth ventricle, in AD group significantly expanded compared with control (P＜0.05), 32 other brain regions in AD group had significant absolute volume atrophy compared with normal control (P＜0.05). Compared with control, 11 brain regions, including medial prefrontal lobe (P=0.0009), middle temporal gyrus (P=0.0003), inferior temporal gyrus (P=0.0012), temporal pole (P=0.0093), angular gyrus (P=0.0030), precuneus (P=0.0052), posterior cingulate gyrus (P=0.0157), amygdala (P＜0.0001), hippocampus (P=0.0016), basal area (P=0.0022), entorhinal area (P=0.0003) in AD group had significant absolute and relative volume decrease.Conclusions The automatic segmentation software can accurately measure the volume of brain regions which has good consistency with. Assessment of brain structure changes by using automatic measurement software has potential AD diagnostic value.
[Keywords] automatic measurement software；Alzheimer's disease；brain atrophy；brain region segmentation；magnetic resonance imaging

LI Huabin1   TANG Xiangqi2   CHEN Yuan3   XIAO Huanhui3   WANG Silun3*  

1 Department of Radiology of Xiangya Second Hospital of Central South University, Changsha 410011, China

2 Department of Neurology of Xiangya Second Hospital of Central South University, Changsha 410011, China

3 Shenzhen Yiwei Medical Technology Co. LTD, Shenzhen 518082, China

Wang SL, E-mail: lawrence.wang@szdrbrain.com

Conflicts of interest   None.

Received  2020-09-14
Accepted  2020-11-25
DOI: 10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2021.06.006
Cite this article as: Li HB, Tang XQ, Chen Y, et al. Primary study of automatic segmentation and measurement of brain region volumes applicating in Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis[J]. Chin J Magn Reson Imaging, 2021, 12(6): 27-33. DOI:10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2021.06.006.

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