Automated measurement of three-dimensional cerebral cortical thickness in Alzheimer’s patients using localized gradient vector trajectory in fuzzy membership maps

Chiaki Tokunaga, Hidetaka Arimura, Takashi Yoshiura, Tomoyuki Ohara, Yasuo Yamashita, Kouji Kobayashi, Taiki Magome, Yasuhiko Nakamura, Hiroshi Honda, Hideki Hirata, Masafumi Ohki, Fukai Toyofuku

Department of Clinical Radiology, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.
Department of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.
Department of Health Sciences, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.
Department of Neuropsychiatry, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.
Division of Radiology, Department of Medical Technology, Kyushu University Hospital, Fukuoka, Japan.

DOI: 10.4236/jbise.2013.63A042                

Abstract

Our purpose in this study was to develop an automated method for measuring three-dimensional (3D) cerebral cortical thicknesses in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) using magnetic resonance (MR) images. Our proposed method consists of mainly three steps. First, a brain parenchymal region was segmented based on brain model matching. Second, a 3D fuzzy membership map for a cerebral cortical region was created by applying a fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering algorithm to T1-weighted MR images. Third, cerebral cortical thickness was three- dimensionally measured on each cortical surface voxel by using a localized gradient vector trajectory in a fuzzy membership map. Spherical models with 3 mm artificial cortical regions, which were produced using three noise levels of 2%, 5%, and 10%, were employed to evaluate the proposed method. We also applied the proposed method to T1-weighted images obtained from 20 cases, i.e., 10 clinically diagnosed AD cases and 10 clinically normal (CN) subjects. The thicknesses of the 3 mm artificial cortical regions for spherical models with noise levels of 2%, 5%, and 10% were measured by the proposed method as 2.953 ± 0.342, 2.953 ± 0.342 and 2.952 ± 0.343 mm, respectively. Thus the mean thicknesses for the entire cerebral lobar region were 3.1 ± 0.4 mm for AD patients and 3.3 ± 0.4 mm for CN subjects, respectively (p < 0.05). The proposed method could be feasible for measuring the 3D cerebral cortical thickness on individual cortical surface voxels as an atrophy feature in AD.

Keywords

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD); Fuzzy C-Means Clustering (FCM); Three-Dimensional Cerebral Cortical Thickness; Localized Gradient Vector

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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