Jesu Christopher Joseph1, Anton Eicher2,
Christopher Warton1, Sandra W Jacobson3, Joseph L Jacobson3,
Christopher D Molteno, Patrick Marais2, Ernesta M Meintjes1
1Human Biology, University of Cape
Town, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa; 2Computer Science,
University of Cape Town, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa; 3Psychiatry
and Behavioral Neurosciences, Wayne State University, Detroit, United States
The
main objective of this work is to assess the shape variations of the
hippocampus structure between control and FAS affected children. For this
High-resolution structural MRI images were acquired of 12 children aged 9-12
years on a 3T Siemens Allegra Scanner (6 controls and 6 FAS). Hippocampi were
manually delineated. The entire structure of the hippocampus was divided into
three regions, namely head, body and tail. A point distribution model, which
represents the mean geometry of a shape using landmark points, was used to
capture the true geometry of the hippocampus. Approximately 2366 landmark
points were used. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to study
correlations of movement between groups of landmark points among the control
children who were used as the training set and to assess the geometric
variations between the healthy and exposed subjects.
Keywords