Hojjatollah Azadbakht1, David M. Morris1,
Hamied A. Haroon1,
1Imaging Science &
Biomedical Engineering, School of Cancer & Imaging Sciences, University
of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom; 2Clinical Imaging Centre,
GlaxoSmithKline, London, United Kingdom; 3Greater Manchester
Neuroscience Centre, Salford Royal Foundation Trust, Manchester, United
Kingdom
While current literature has mainly focused on measuring the atrophy of whole brain, global grey and/or white matter (WM), specific lobes or grey matter structures (e.g. the hippocampus), it is likely that atrophy caused by conditions such as Alzheimers also affects WM tracts via degenerative processes. If specific tract systems are more prone to atrophy than others, then tractography-guided atrophy measurements may be more sensitive biomarkers of degeneration than less targeted methods. For this purpose, in this work we apply a novel method for quantifying the progression atrophy in Normal-Aged and AD subjects undergoing serial diffusion MRI scans 1-year apart.
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