Efficacy of Voxel-Based Morphometry with DARTEL and Standard Registration as Imaging Biomarkers in Alzheimer's Disease Patients and Cognitively Normal Older Adults at 3.0 Tesla MR Imaging
Affiliations: [a] Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China | [b] Department of Management Sciences, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China | [c] Philips Healthcare, Hong Kong, China | [d] Division of Geriatric Medicine, Department of Medicine, Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong, China | [e] Alzheimer's Disease Research Network, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China | [f] Research Centre of Heart, Brain, Hormone & Healthy Aging, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Correspondence:
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Correspondence to: Henry Ka-Fung Mak, Room 406, Block K, Queen Mary Hospital, 102 Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong. Tel.: +852 22553307 or +852 22937802; Fax: +852 28551652 or +852 28174013. E-mail: makkf@hkucc.hku.hk.
Abstract: Quantitative MRI of the hippocampus has been increasingly employed as a biomarker in Alzheimer's disease (AD). We compare voxel-based morphometry (VBM) standard and DARTEL registration with manual hippocampal volumetry in AD patients and cognitively normal older adults. Participants were 20 cognitively normal elderly subjects and 19 AD patients who met the criteria of probable AD according to NINCDS-ADRDA. Bilateral manual hippocampal volumetry was conducted alongside VBM of hippocampal regions-of-interest (ROIs) generated with standard and DARTEL registration using hippocampal masks and total intracranial volume normalization. All normalized hippocampal measurements showed significant reduction (20–30%; p < 0.001) in AD compared to controls. Logistic regression analysis also showed significant effects (odds ratios ranged from 88.2% to 94.0%) of all normalized measurements in predicting AD incidence after adjusting for age, gender, and education. The overall prediction accuracies of manual RH and LH volumes, standard RH-ROI and LH-ROI VBM, DARTEL RH-ROI, and LH-ROI VBM were 87.2%, 84.6%, 87.2%, 76.9%, 87.2%, and 87.2%, respectively. As imaging biomarkers, VBM with DARTEL and standard registration have similarly high efficacies as manual hippocampal volumetry in discriminating AD from cognitively normal elderly adults.
