Righart R, Schmidt P, Dahnke R, Biberacher V, Beer A, Buck D, Hemmer B, Kirschke J S, Zimmer C, Gaser C, Mühlau M
Department of Neurology, Klinikum rechts der Isar, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany.
TUM-Neuroimaging Center, Klinikum rechts der Isar, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany.
PLoS One. 2017 Jul 6;12(7):e0179590. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0179590. eCollection 2017.
The cerebral cortex is a highly folded outer layer of grey matter tissue that plays a key role in cognitive functions. In part, alterations of the cortex during development and disease can be captured by measuring the cortical thickness across the whole brain. Available software tools differ with regard to labor intensity and computational demands. In this study, we compared the computational anatomy toolbox (CAT), a recently proposed volume-based tool, with the well-established surface-based tool FreeSurfer. We observed that overall thickness measures were highly inter-correlated, although thickness estimates were systematically lower in CAT than in FreeSurfer. Comparison of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients with age-matched healthy control subjects showed highly comparable clusters of MS-related thinning for both methods. Likewise, both methods yielded comparable clusters of age-related cortical thinning, although correlations between age and average cortical thickness were stronger for FreeSurfer. Our data suggest that, for the analysis of cortical thickness, the volume-based CAT tool can be regarded a considerable alternative to the well-established surface-based FreeSurfer tool.
大脑皮层是灰质组织的高度折叠外层，在认知功能中起关键作用。在一定程度上，发育和疾病过程中皮层的改变可以通过测量全脑的皮层厚度来捕捉。现有的软件工具在劳动强度和计算需求方面存在差异。在本研究中，我们将最近提出的基于体积的计算解剖工具箱（CAT）与成熟的基于表面的工具FreeSurfer进行了比较。我们观察到，尽管CAT中的厚度估计值系统地低于FreeSurfer，但总体厚度测量值高度相关。对多发性硬化症（MS）患者与年龄匹配的健康对照受试者的比较表明，两种方法在与MS相关的变薄区域上具有高度可比的聚类。同样，两种方法都产生了与年龄相关的皮层变薄的可比聚类，尽管FreeSurfer中年龄与平均皮层厚度之间的相关性更强。我们的数据表明，对于皮层厚度分析，基于体积的CAT工具可以被视为成熟的基于表面的FreeSurfer工具的一个相当不错的替代方案。
