Matthew J. Clarkson1,2, Casper Nielsen1, Kelvin L. Leung1,2, Josephine Barnes1, Jennifer L. Whitwell3, Jeffrey Gunter3, Clifford R. Jack3, Nick C. Fox1, Sebastien Ourselin1,2
1Dementia Research Centre, University College London, London, UK; 2Centre For Medical Image Computing, University College London, London, UK; 3Mayo Clinic College Of Medicine, Rochester, MN, USA
Rates of brain atrophy from serial MR studies may be confounded by scanner drift. This is the first study to directly compare voxel size correction using a phantom to a 9 degrees of freedom (DOF) registration algorithm, using multi-site data (ADNI). These results show that 9DOF registration is comparable to a phantom with no significant differences in brain atrophy measurements, and that there is no significant difference in the scaling correction for control and Alzheimer's disease subjects. This implies that registration is a viable alternative, which can be applied as a post-processing alternative to scanning a phantom.