Brain morphometry in older adults with and without dementia using extremely rapid structural scans

Maxwell L Elliott; Lindsay C Hanford; Aya Hamadeh; Tom Hilbert; Tobias Kober; Bradford C Dickerson; Ross W Mair; Mark C Eldaief; Randy L Buckner

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120173

Brain morphometry in older adults with and without dementia using extremely rapid structural scans

Neuroimage. 2023 Aug 1:276:120173. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120173. Epub 2023 May 16.

Authors

Maxwell L Elliott¹, Lindsay C Hanford², Aya Hamadeh³, Tom Hilbert⁴, Tobias Kober⁴, Bradford C Dickerson⁵, Ross W Mair⁶, Mark C Eldaief⁷, Randy L Buckner⁸

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, 52 Oxford Street, Northwest Laboratory 280.10, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. Electronic address: maxwell_elliott@fas.harvard.edu.
² Department of Psychology, Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, 52 Oxford Street, Northwest Laboratory 280.10, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
³ Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
⁴ Advanced Clinical Imaging Technology, Siemens Healthineers International AG, Lausanne, Switzerland; Department of Radiology, Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland; LTS5, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland.
⁵ Frontotemporal Disorders Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, USA; Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, USA; Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, USA; Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA.
⁶ Department of Psychology, Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, 52 Oxford Street, Northwest Laboratory 280.10, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA; Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, USA.
⁷ Frontotemporal Disorders Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, USA; Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, USA; Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA.
⁸ Department of Psychology, Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, 52 Oxford Street, Northwest Laboratory 280.10, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA; Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, USA; Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA.

Abstract

T1-weighted structural MRI is widely used to measure brain morphometry (e.g., cortical thickness and subcortical volumes). Accelerated scans as fast as one minute or less are now available but it is unclear if they are adequate for quantitative morphometry. Here we compared the measurement properties of a widely adopted 1.0 mm resolution scan from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI = 5'12'') with two variants of highly accelerated 1.0 mm scans (compressed-sensing, CSx6 = 1'12''; and wave-controlled aliasing in parallel imaging, WAVEx9 = 1'09'') in a test-retest study of 37 older adults aged 54 to 86 (including 19 individuals diagnosed with a neurodegenerative dementia). Rapid scans produced highly reliable morphometric measures that largely matched the quality of morphometrics derived from the ADNI scan. Regions of lower reliability and relative divergence between ADNI and rapid scan alternatives tended to occur in midline regions and regions with susceptibility-induced artifacts. Critically, the rapid scans yielded morphometric measures similar to the ADNI scan in regions of high atrophy. The results converge to suggest that, for many current uses, extremely rapid scans can replace longer scans. As a final test, we explored the possibility of a 0'49'' 1.2 mm CSx6 structural scan, which also showed promise. Rapid structural scans may benefit MRI studies by shortening the scan session and reducing cost, minimizing opportunity for movement, creating room for additional scan sequences, and allowing for the repetition of structural scans to increase precision of the estimates.

Keywords: ADNI; Aging; Alzheimer's disease; Frontotemporal lobar degeneration; Hippocampus; MRI.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

Aged
Alzheimer Disease* / diagnosis
Brain / diagnostic imaging
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging / methods
Neuroimaging / methods
Reproducibility of Results

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

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