Automatic Internal Segmentation of Caudate Nucleus for Diagnosis of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

摘要

Studies on volumetric brain Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) showed neuroanatomical abnormalities in pediatric Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). In particular, the diminished right caudate volume is one of the most replicated findings among ADHD samples in morphometric MRI studies. In this paper, we propose a fully-automatic method for internal caudate nucleus segmentation based on machine learning. Moreover, the ratio between right caudate body volume and the bilateral caudate body volume is applied in a ADHD diagnostic test. We separately validate the automatic internal segmentation of caudate in head and body structures and the diagnostic test using real data from ADHD and control subjects. As a result, we show accurate internal caudate segmentation and similar performance among the proposed automatic diagnostic test and the manual annotation.