MRI에서 치매진단을 위한 대뇌 피질 두께 비교 분석

Abstract

In a neuroimaging study to diagnose dementia, the decrepitude of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner and the upgrade of technique development make it difficult to maintain the same MRI conditions in the research period. In particularly, as the magnetic field strength increases from 1.5T to 3T it should be ascertained whether it is possible that the existing 1.5T image and new 3T image are analyzed overall. In this study, we analyzed the thickness of the cerebral cortex between brain images with different magnetic field strength and scan-direction. The 296-participant's 3D T1 images are acquired by in each of 3T and 1.5T MRI in different scan-direction, and the thickness of participant's cerebral cortex is measured by Freesurfer to be used extensively on neuroimaging study. In order to verify the difference among the kinds of images of cerebral cortex's thickness, the One-way ANOVA and matching Paired T-test are performed. As a result, it is verified that each cerebral cortex's thickness had significant difference depending on the magnetic field strength and scan-direction. Also, we classified the participants into the normal, mild cognitive impairment(MCI) and dementia, and after the One-way ANOVA is performed to each of them. Consequently, we confirmed that each section of cerebral cortex's thickness had significant difference. As this result means that the measured cerebral cortex's thickness may be changed depending on the photographic conditions, which causes the problem of the lesion measurement that judge the dementia. To diagnose dementia, it is considered that the development of the technique is necessary to integrate and analyze images of different conditions.