Andreia Vasconcellos Faria1,2, Alexander
Hoon3, Elaine Stashinko3, Ameneh Mashayekh1,
Xin Li4, Hangyi Jiang1,4, Kazi Akhter1,
Kenichi Oishi1, Jiangyang Zhang1, Peter van Zijl1,4,
Michael Miller5, Susumu Mori1
1Radiology, Johns Hopkins University,
Baltimore, MD, United States; 2Radiology, State University of
Campinas, Campinas, SP, Brazil; 3Division of Neurology and
Developmental Medicine, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD, United
States; 4F.M. Kirby Research Center for Functional Brain Imaging,
Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD, United States; 5Biomedical
Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States
We
developed a new method to provide a comprehensive quantitative analysis of
brain anatomy in cerebral palsy patients, based on two technical points:
diffusion tensor imaging and an automated 3D whole brain segmentation based
on our brain atlas and a nonlinear normalization technique (large-deformation
diffeomorphic metric mapping). This method was applied to thirteen patients and
the reliability of the automated segmentation measured by Kappa revealed
"almost perfect" agreement with the manual segmentation. We
illustrate some potential applications on individual characterization and
group comparison. This technique also provides a framework to determine the
impact of various neuroanatomic features on brain functions.