Modelling Smooth Intensity Changes in the Putamen for Diagnosis of Sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease

摘要

The putamen, one of the deep grey matter structures in the brain, is unusual in that MRI intensities vary smoothly within the structure. We develop a geometric and intensity model of the putamen, and in averaged images from 60 CJD patients and non-CJD clinical controls we show these smooth changes clearly. In the axial plane, there is a linear decrease of T2 intensity from anterior to posterior in the central part of the putamen. The gradient is significantly higher in sporadic CJD, but not in variant CJD, than controls. We show that gradient quantification would give good sensitivity and specificity, making this suitable as a simple screening test for sporadic CJD. However, the data are preliminary; a wider database of patients and further statistical analyses are needed for a robust definition of the clinical role of the test.