A tracking-based diffusion tensor imaging segmentation method for the detection of diffusion-related changes of the cervical spinal cord with aging
Autor: | E. Vandervliet, Wim Van Hecke, Alexander Leemans, Jan Sijbers, Paul M. Parizel, Johan Van Goethem |
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Rok vydání: | 2008 |
Předmět: |
Adult
Male Aging computer.software_genre Corpus callosum Voxel Region of interest Fractional anisotropy medicine Humans Radiology Nuclear Medicine and imaging Segmentation Aged Aged 80 and over business.industry Reproducibility of Results Anatomy Middle Aged Spinal cord Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging medicine.anatomical_structure Spinal Cord nervous system Cervical Vertebrae Female Artifacts business computer Diffusion MRI Tractography Biomedical engineering |
Zdroj: | Journal of magnetic resonance imaging ResearcherID |
ISSN: | 1522-2586 1053-1807 |
Popis: | To compare region of interest (ROI)-based and diffusion tensor tractography (DTT)-based methods for evaluating diffusion properties of the spinal cord as a function of age.Commonly, an ROI segmentation is used to delineate the spinal cord. In this work, new segmentation methods are developed based on DTT. In a first, DTT-based, segmentation approach, the diffusion properties are calculated on the tracts. In a second method, the diffusion properties are analyzed in the spinal cord voxels that contain a certain number of tracts. We studied the changes in diffusion properties of the human spinal cord in subjects of different ages. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) measurements of the cervical spinal cord were acquired on 42 healthy volunteers (age range = 19-87 years). The fractional anisotropy (FA), the mean diffusivity (MD), and eigenvalues (lambda(1), lambda(2), and lambda(3)) were compared for the ROI- and DTT-based segmentation methods.Our automatic techniques are shown to be highly reproducible and sensitive for detecting DTI changes. FA decreased (r = -0.38; P0.05), whereas MD and eigenvalues increased (r = +/- 0.45; P0.05) with age. These trends were not statistically significant for the ROI-based segmentation (P0.05).DTT is a robust and reproducible technique to segment the voxels of interest in the spinal cord. |
Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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