Abstract #3203

Influence of Hypointense White Matter Lesions in Segmentation Based Assessment of Brain Volume. Implications for Clinical MS Studies.

Marco Battaglini¹, Antonio Giorgio², Maria Laura Stromillo², Nicola De Stefano²

¹Department of Neurological and Behavioral Sciences , University of Siena, Siena, Toscany, Italy; ²Department of Neurological and Behavioral Sciences, University of Siena, Siena, Toscany, Italy

Brain atrophy is an important marker for disease progression in multiple sclerosis (MS). The influence of T1 hypointense lesions on compartimental brain volumes was tested on 5 patients. Percent volume differences of normalised cortical grey matter (NC-PVDs) and white matter (NW-PVDs) between T1-W images with very low lesion volume (LV) and T1-W images with increasing LV and different lesion intensity (LI) were computed. With increasing LV, NCV was underestimated for LI between GM and WM LI. LV and LI of T1 hypointense lesions should be considered when using segmentation-based algorithms for brain volumes quantification.