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Within-subject test-retest reliability of the atlas-based cortical volume measurement in the rat brain: A voxel-based morphometry study.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Various neurological and psychological disorders are related to cortical volume changes in specific brain regions, which can be measured in vivo using structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI). There is an increasing interest in MRI studies using rat models, especially in longitudinal studies of brain disorders and pharmacologic interventions. However, morphometric changes observed in sMRI are only meaningful if the measurements are reliable. To date, a systematic evaluation of the test-retest reliability of the morphometric measures in the rat brain is still lacking. NEW METHOD:We rigorously evaluated the test-retest reliability of morphometric measures derived from the voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis. 37 Sprague-Dawley rats were scanned twice at an interval of six hours and the gray matter volume was estimated using the VBM-DARTEL method. The intraclass coefficient, percent volume change and Pearson correlation coefficient were used to evaluate the reliability in 96 subregions of the rat brain. RESULTS:Most subregions showed excellent test-retest reliabilities within an interval of 6?h while a few regions demonstrated lower reliability, especially in the retrosplenial granular cortex. The results were consistent between different methods of reliability assessment. COMPARISON WITH EXISTING METHOD:To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to quantify the test-retest reliability of the VBM measurements of the rat brain. CONCLUSION:Atlas-based cortical volume of the rat brain can be reliably estimated using the VBM-DARTEL method in most subregions. However, findings in subregions with lower reliability must be interpreted with caution.

SUBMITTER: Jing B

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6461491 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Within-subject test-retest reliability of the atlas-based cortical volume measurement in the rat brain: A voxel-based morphometry study.

Jing Bin B Liu Bo B Li Hui H Lei Jianfeng J Wang Zhanjing Z Yang Yutao Y Sun Phillip Zhe PZ Xue Bing B Liu Hesheng H Xu Zhi-Qing David ZD

Journal of neuroscience methods 20180628

<h4>Background</h4>Various neurological and psychological disorders are related to cortical volume changes in specific brain regions, which can be measured in vivo using structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI). There is an increasing interest in MRI studies using rat models, especially in longitudinal studies of brain disorders and pharmacologic interventions. However, morphometric changes observed in sMRI are only meaningful if the measurements are reliable. To date, a systematic evaluatio ...[more]

PMID: 29960027

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Project description:Voxel based morphometry (VBM) is a widely utilized neuroimaging technique for spatially normalizing brain structural MRI (sMRI) onto a common template. The DARTEL technique of VBM takes into account the spatial intensity distribution of sMRIs to construct a study specific group template. The group template is then used to create final individual normalized tissue maps (FINTM) for each subject in the group. In this study, we investigate the effect of group on FINTM, i.e., we evaluate the variability of a constant subject's FINTM when other subjects in the group are iteratively changed. We examine this variability under the following scenarios: (1) when the demographics of the iterative groups are similar, (2) when the average age of the iterative groups is increased, and (3) when the number of subjects with a brain disorder (here we use subjects with autism) is increased. Our results show that when subject demographics of the group remains similar the mean standard deviation (SD) of FINTM gray matter (GM) of the constant subject was around 0.01. As the average age of the group is increased, mean SD of GM increased to around 0.03 and at certain brain locations variability was as high as 0.23. A similar increase in variability was observed when the number of autism subjects in the group was increased where mean SD was around 0.02. Further, we find that autism vs. control GM differences are in the range of -0.05 to +0.05 for more than 97% of the voxels and note that the magnitude of the differences are comparable to GM variability. Finally, we report that opting not to modulate during normalization or increasing the size of the smoothing kernel can decrease FINTM variability but at the loss of subject-specific features. Based on the findings of this study, we outline precautions that should be considered by investigators to reduce the impact of group on FINTM and thereby derive more meaningful group differences when comparing two cohorts of subjects.

Dataset Information

Within-subject test-retest reliability of the atlas-based cortical volume measurement in the rat brain: A voxel-based morphometry study.

Publications

Within-subject test-retest reliability of the atlas-based cortical volume measurement in the rat brain: A voxel-based morphometry study.

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