Assessing the Accuracy of Detecting Mouse Brain Structure Changes from MRI Using Simulated Deformations

Matthijs Christiaan van Eede¹, R Mark Henkelman¹, Jason P. Lerch¹

The use of image registration to investigate shape differences in mouse brain MRIs have become a significant area of interest. It is unknown how accurately structural changes can be detected or whether this sensitivity varies with structure shape. We present a novel method to simulate deformation fields with known structural tissue change and subsequently attempt to recover the induced changes in 21 structures. We demonstrate that image based registration algorithms can reliably detect structural shape differences down to 5% in the structures with a lower surface to volume ratio, and reliably down to 10% in all others.