Shun Xu1, Hongtu Zhu2, Martin
Styner1,3, Wei Gao4, Valerie Jewells5,
Dinggang Shen1,4, Weili Lin4,6
1Computer Science,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States; 2Biostatistics,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States; 3Psychiatry,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States; 4Radiology,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States; 5Neuroradiology,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States; 6Biomedical
Engineering, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States
It is prominent to be able to determine the normal growth patterns of brain structures in healthy infants and young children. However, such information is lacking for the first year of human life. In this ongoing longitudinal study, subjects were scanned repeatedly every 3 months during the first year of age. We developed longitudinal shape statistical methods to study the growth pattern of the lateral ventricles of the brain, and obtained significant findings that the growth of lateral ventricles at different locations/regions is not uniform or congruent during the first year of life, with the frontal and caudal ends of the ventricle extend most rapidly towards the anterior and posterior directions respectively and the mid-body remains relatively constant.