Baron J C, Chételat G, Desgranges B, Perchey G, Landeau B, de la Sayette V, Eustache F
INSERM U320, University of Caen, Caen, France.
Neuroimage. 2001 Aug;14(2):298-309. doi: 10.1006/nimg.2001.0848.
Up till now, the study of regional gray matter atrophy in Alzheimer's disease (AD) has been assessed with regions of interest, but this method is time-consuming, observer dependent, and poorly reproducible (especially in terms of cortical regions boundaries) and in addition is not suited to provide a comprehensive assessment of the brain. In this study, we have mapped gray matter density by means of voxel-based morphometry on T1-weighted MRI volume sets in 19 patients with mild AD and 16 healthy subjects of similar age and gender ratio and report highly significant clusters of gray matter loss with almost symmetrical distribution, affecting mainly and in decreasing order of significance the medial temporal structures, the posterior cingulate gyrus and adjacent precuneus, and the temporoparietal association and perisylvian neocortex, with only little atrophy in the frontal lobe. The findings are discussed in light of previous studies of gray matter atrophy in AD based either on postmortem or neuroimaging data and in relation to PET studies of resting glucose consumption. The limitations of the method are also discussed in some detail, especially with respect to the segmentation and spatial normalization procedures as they apply to pathological brains. Some potential applications of voxel-based morphometry in the study of AD are also mentioned.
到目前为止，阿尔茨海默病（AD）区域灰质萎缩的研究一直是通过感兴趣区域进行评估的，但这种方法耗时、依赖观察者且重复性差（尤其是在皮质区域边界方面），此外也不适用于对大脑进行全面评估。在本研究中，我们通过基于体素的形态测量法，对19例轻度AD患者以及16名年龄和性别比例相近的健康受试者的T1加权MRI体积数据集进行了灰质密度映射，并报告了高度显著的灰质丢失簇，其分布几乎对称，主要且按显著性递减顺序影响内侧颞叶结构、后扣带回和相邻的楔前叶，以及颞顶联合区和外侧裂周围新皮质，额叶仅有轻微萎缩。我们根据以往基于尸检或神经影像学数据的AD灰质萎缩研究以及静息葡萄糖消耗的PET研究对这些发现进行了讨论。还详细讨论了该方法的局限性，特别是在应用于病理性大脑时的分割和空间归一化程序。文中还提到了基于体素的形态测量法在AD研究中的一些潜在应用。
