Use of MRI to Measure Whole Brain Atrophy in MS Patients

P. Mazgaja, Z. Drzazgaa, I. Karpiela, A. Giec-Lorenzb and E. Krzystanekc aDepartment of Medical Physics, Institute of Physics, University of Silesia, Uniwersytecka 4, 40-007 Katowice, Poland bHelimed Diagnostic Imaging Sp. z o.o., Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Medyków 14, 40-752 Katowice, Poland c Department of Neurology, Medical University of Silesia in Katowice, ul. Medyków 14, 47-750 Katowice, Poland

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Nowadays magnetic resonance imaging is used for anatomical assessment of human brain structures in neurodegenerative disorders causing brain atrophy for instance in multiple sclerosis (MS) or in Alzheimer Disease. Pathological brain tissue loss can be described in terms of change in the brain parenchymal fraction (BPF). This work shows the impact of segmentation method in SPM12 and additional segmentation in Computational Anatomy Toolbox (CAT12) on calculated BPF value for patients suffer from with MS no treated and treated with disease-modifying drug (DMD) interferon-beta (INFb) for one year and two years. Both methods confirm that brain parenchymal fraction decreases with age, nevertheless for patients not treated INFb decreases faster than for treated. An usability of Lesion Segmentation Tool toolbox in process of automatic detection and segmentation T2 hyperintense lesions in FLAIR images is discussed.

DOI: 10.12693/APhysPolA.133.725 PACS numbers: 87.57.Nk, 87 .61.Pk, 87.66.Uv