Affiliations: [a] Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. Móstoles, Madrid, Spain | [b] Neuroimaging Laboratory, Fundación CIEN-Fundación Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain | [c] Hospital Clínico San Carlos, Madrid, Spain | [d] Clinical Science Development Group, GE Healthcare, Buc, France | [e] Center of Medical Informatics and Radiological Diagnosis (IMEDIR), Universidad de A Coruña, A Coruña, Spain | [f] Hospital Ruber Internacional, Madrid, Spain | [g] Hospital Universitario La Paz, Madrid, Spain | [h] Centro de Tecnología Biomédica, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Correspondence:
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Correspondence to: Virginia Mato Abad, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Departamento de Tecnología Electrónica, C/Tulipan s/n. Dep. II Despacho 157, Mostoles, Madrid 28933, Spain. Tel.: +34 914888522; Ext. 8522; E-mail: virginia.mato@urjc.es.
Abstract:
1H-MRS variability increases due to normal aging and also as a result of atrophy in grey and white matter caused by neurodegeneration. In this work, an automatic process was developed to integrate data from spectra and high-resolution anatomical images to quantify metabolites, taking into account tissue partial volumes within the voxel of interest avoiding additional spectra acquisitions required for partial volume correction. To evaluate this method, we use a cohort of 135 subjects (47 male and 88 female, aged between 57 and 99 years) classified into 4 groups: 38 healthy participants, 20 amnesic mild cognitive impairment patients, 22 multi-domain mild cognitive impairment patients, and 55 Alzheimer's disease patients. Our findings suggest that knowing the voxel composition of white and grey matter and cerebrospinal fluid is necessary to avoid partial volume variations in a single-voxel study and to decrease part of the variability found in metabolites quantification, particularly in those studies involving elder patients and neurodegenerative diseases. The proposed method facilitates the use of 1H-MRS techniques in statistical studies in Alzheimer's disease, because it provides more accurate quantitative measurements, reduces the inter-subject variability, and improves statistical results when performing group comparisons.
Keywords: Alzheimer's disease, dementia, magnetic resonance imaging, magnetic resonance spectroscopy, mild cognitive impairment, myoinositol, N-acetylaspartate
