Cross-sectional exploration of local spatial arrangements in brain magnetic resonance in healthy and Alzheimer subjects

摘要

This work explores the spatial coherence of magnetic patterns at a microanatomical scale, using a texture descriptor (LBP) which captures local spatial relationships between levels of intensity in Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI). The relative frequency of these texture micropatterns was estimated and used as a regional characterization according to the Harvard Oxford anatomical parcellation. This characterization was compared for different groups of age in healthy and patients with Alzheimer's disease. A statistical analysis was conducted by partitioning the total sample age in sub intervals of fixed length. Subsequently, an ANOVA analysis was performed to determine the existence of statistically significant differences between these age ranges, as well as a multiple comparison of these age ranges characterization using a Tukey Test. Finally, based on similarity of these comparisons, a grouping of the considered regions was achieved. The method was also applied to group of subjects with Alzheimer's Disease. A different distribution of these texture patterns was observed between cortical and subcortical areas while patients with Alzheimer's disease showed unique differences at the amygdala level while the hippocampus appeared as part of a group that also expressed differences.